NEW DELHI (AFP) – India’s government said it has blocked videos and tweets sharing links to a BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role during deadly 2002 sectarian riots.
The British broadcaster’s program alleges that the Hindu nationalist Modi, premier of Gujarat state at the time, ordered police to turn a blind eye to the orgy of violence there that left at least 1,000 people dead, most of them Muslims.
Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the government, tweeted on Saturday that the Indian government used emergency powers under IT rules to block the documentary and its clips from being shared on social media.
Orders were also issued to Twitter to block over 50 tweets with links to YouTube videos.
Created by BBC, the two-part documentary, the first part of which aired on January 17, tracked Modi’s early years as a politician and later climbing through the ranks within the infamous Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).
Before becoming the prime minister of India in 2014, Modi held the chair of the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014.
The documentary puts light on the previously unpublished report that raises questions about Modi’s actions during the religious riots that had broken out after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims the day before was set on fire, killing 59.
The victims, mostly Muslims were mercilessly butchered during the 2002 Gujarat riots in February, which lasted for three days, and is considered one of the worst incidents of violence in India since its independence in 1947.
For the first time, a documentary has revealed a UK government report into the communal riots. The UK report said the events had “all the hallmarks of an ethnic cleansing”, the documentary showed.
“Modi had played a proactive part in pulling back police and in tacitly encouraging the Hindu extremists. That was a particularly egregious example of political involvement to prevent police from doing their job to protect the Hindus and the Muslims,” Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary of UK who held office during the riots, is heard saying in the documentary.
The report also claimed there was widespread rape of Muslim women during the 2002 violence.
It added that the riots’ objective was to “purge Muslims from Hindu areas”; something critics today have said has become state policy under the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda.