At around 11 a.m. on Feb 14, some 20 Indian tax officials and police burst into the BBC's offices in New Delhi, shouting at staff to step away from their computers and hand over their mobile phones, according to two people present.
Modi's government has called the documentary "biased" and reflecting a "colonial mindset". Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar told the ANI news agency last week it was "politics by another means" and suggested its timing was intended to undermine support for Modi. The BBC has said it stands by the reporting.
"There's never been a golden age of Indian journalism," said Abhinandan Sekhri, chief executive of independent online media group, Newslaundry, whose offices in New Delhi were surveyed twice by tax officials in 2021 after critical coverage of Modi's administration. "But it has never been like it is now."
Reuters was unable to confirm this independently. The tax agency did not respond to request for comment for this story. Gupta, the advisor to the information ministry, denied any government agency had targeted the media in response to coverage, or suspended any advertising. He said the government had stated repeatedly that harassment of journalists was unacceptable and against the law.The Editors Guild of India, an industry association, said the BBC raids were part of a trend of "government agencies being used to intimidate and harass news organisations.
In a report last year, Reporters Without Borders said that, despite high readership, many Indian news organisations were vulnerable to economic pressure because of their reliance on government advertising. "Government doesn't exist to fund media. We don't want a media which is loyal to us or beholden to us because of the money that we give them," he said.Reports from international press freedom watchdogs, including the Committee to Protect Journalists , say that - in addition to the financial pressures on media organizations - the federal and state governments in India have detained an increasing number of journalists for their reporting.
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