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23-05-2023
Bureau Report
LONDON/ NEW DELHI: An Indian court has issued a summons to the BBC in a defamation case over its documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to reports in the Indian media.
The Delhi High Court on Monday issued the summons to the British broadcaster for its documentary film that questioned Modi’s leadership during the 2002 Gujarat riots in which at least 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims.
Activists put the death toll at more than twice that number.
Modi was the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014, the year he won the national elections and became the prime minister.
The defamation suit, filed by a non-profit based in Gujarat, states the documentary India: The Modi Question that aired earlier this year cast a slur on India’s reputation and that of its judiciary and the prime minister, the reports said.
The summons came months after Indian tax officials inspected the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai in February following an angry response by the Indian government to the documentary.
The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the Reuters news agency said.
Modi has denied accusations that he did not do enough to stop the riots and a Supreme Court-ordered investigation found no evidence to prosecute him.
A petition seeking a new investigation was dismissed by the Supreme Court last year.
The government called the documentary, which was banned in India, a biased “propaganda piece” and blocked sharing of any clips from it on social media.
The BBC has previously said it “does not have an agenda” and has stood by its reporting for the documentary.
India’s Ministry of Finance has accused the BBC of tax evasion, saying that it had not fully declared its income and profits from its operations in the country.
Indian tax authorities ended three days of searches of the British broadcaster’s New Delhi and Mumbai offices on Thursday night.
Without naming the BBC, the Central Board of Direct Taxes said on Friday in its first official statement since completing the office inspections that its “survey revealed that despite substantial consumption of content in various Indian languages (apart from English), the income/profits shown by various group entities is not commensurate with the scale of operations in India.”
