Indian Police Detained Students After Stopping Screening a BBC Documentary on Modi

(CTN News) – After preventing the broadcast of a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s involvement in fatal sectarian riots in 2002, Indian police arrested students in New Delhi on Friday.

Following other campuses throughout the nation, the students at Delhi University staged a broadcast, despite government attempts to curtail its dissemination by preventing its posting on social media.

After student organizations that supported Modi’s government complained about the screening, police descended on the institution, confiscating computers and enforcing a ban on gatherings with more than four individuals.

24 students were held, according to police officer Sagar Singh Kalsi, who spoke with the Indian news outlet NDTV.

According to the two-part BBC documentary, Modi instructed police to ignore fatal riots when he was Gujarat state’s chief minister.

The unrest started when a train fire claimed the lives of 59 Hindu pilgrims. In connection with the event, 31 Muslims were found guilty of murder and criminal conspiracy.

In the subsequent rioting, at least 1,000 individuals perished, most of them Muslims.

The violence was “politically driven,” according to a report from the British foreign ministry that was previously classified, and its goal was “to cleanse Muslims from Hindu regions,” according to the documentary.

The study asserts that Modi’s administration’s “environment of impunity” made the riots possible.

Under contentious information technology rules, India has labeled the series as “hostile” propaganda and ordered major social media sites like Twitter and YouTube to prevent anyone from sharing or watching it.

Earlier this week, authorities at the esteemed Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi similarly forbade an attempted screening and threatened “severe disciplinary punishment” if the directive was disregarded.

But rebellious groups of students have assembled to view the documentary on laptop and phone screens both there and at several college campuses around India.

From 2001 until he was elected prime minister in 2014, Modi served as governor of Gujarat. The United States momentarily imposed a travel restriction on him because of the unrest.

In 2012, a team of investigators tasked by the Indian Supreme Court with looking into Modi’s and others’ involvement in the violence said that they had not discovered any evidence to bring charges against him.

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