BBC exposé on Modi banned by India online

INDIA has blocked access to a BBC documentary on Narendra Modi’s role during the 2002 riot massacre calling it “anti-india garbage”.

The BBC’S India: The Modi Question alleges that Mr Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister who was premier of Gujarat state at the time of the riots, ordered police to turn a blind eye to the violence which left at least 1,000 people dead, most of them minority Muslims.

Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the government, tweeted that the Indian government used emergency powers to block the documentary and its clips from being shared on social media.

“Videos sharing @Bbcworld hostile propaganda and anti-india garbage, disguised as ‘documentary’, on @Youtube and tweets sharing links to the BBC documentary have been blocked under India’s sovereign laws and rules,” he said. Orders were also issued to Twitter to block more than 50 tweets with links to Youtube videos from the documentary. Both Youtube and Twitter have complied with the instructions, Mr Gupta said. The riots began after 59 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a fire on a train. Thirty-one Muslims were convicted of criminal conspiracy and murder.

The BBC documentary cited a previously classified British foreign ministry report quoting unnamed sources saying that Mr Modi met senior police officers and “ordered them not to intervene” in the violence by Hindu groups.

A special investigative team appointed by the Indian Supreme Court to probe the role of Mr Modi and others in the violence said in 2012 it did not find any evidence to prosecute him. Mr Gupta said multiple ministries found the documentary “casting aspersions on the authority and credibility of Supreme Court of India, sowing divisions among various Indian communities, and making unsubstantiated allegations”.