By Dr. Gyan Pathak
The truthfulness of the BBC documentary “The Modi Question” was never put on trial and now the plaintiff NGO from Gujarat, Justice on Trial, withdrew its ₹10,000 crore defamation lawsuit against BBC on September 3, 2026, with liberty to file a fresh suit on the same cause of action. BBC was never required to defend itself in the court because the matter never reached that stage, while in public BBC stood with the truthfulness of the content of the documentary pointing out that the series met their highest, most rigorous editorial standards.
Justice on Trial had filed the original defamation lawsuit in 2023 along with an Indigent Person Application (IPA) for waiver of court fees under Order 33 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The Delhi high court had allowed the IPA and sought the BBC’s response on it. Advocate Siddahrth Sharma appeared for the NGO before Justice Tushar Rao Gedela on September 3 and requested to withdraw the IPA along with the original defamation suit, which was allowed, and the case was dismissed as withdrawn.
It should be noted that during the last three years, the cased did not reach the trial stage. The Delhi High Court issued notice on the indigent-person application, and not on the substantive defamation suit itself. The main suit therefore did not progress to the stage where the BBC had to defend the documentary’s journalism on its merits.
Three years was a substantial delay and the court had been questioning maintainability of the case. In December 2025, the High Court expressed displeasure at repeated adjournments and gave the NGO a “last and final opportunity” to address the question of maintainability. Then, on 15 April 2026, the Court imposed ₹20,000 in costs after another adjournment request. Finally, rather than fight through the procedural obstacle, the NGO withdrew the case now.
The defamation lawsuit had alleged that the documentary damaged the reputation not merely of Narendra Modi but of India, the Union government, the Gujarat government and India’s judicial system. However, it turned out to be narrower and technical. The court had to deal with Who can bring this case? Can the plaintiff proceed without paying the enormous court fee? Is the suit maintainable in this form? Why has it not progressed? And so on.
It is worth recalling that The BBC’s two-part documentary, critically examined Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political rise and his administration’s relationship with the country’s Muslim minority, specifically focusing on the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Part 1 aired in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2023, followed by Part 2 on January 24, 2023, on the BBC Two television channel.
The first episode explored Modi’s tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat during the 2002 communal violence, revealing a previously unpublished UK Foreign Office report that characterized the events as having “all the hallmarks of an ethnic cleansing”. The second episode scrutinized his policies after securing a second term as Prime Minister in 2019.
The Indian government officially banned the sharing of the documentary on January 21, 2023. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting invoked emergency powers under Rule 16 of the Information Technology Rules, 2021, and Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000.
While the BBC never officially broadcast the film in India, the government ordered YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) to remove all links and video clips. Despite the block, university student groups across India organized defiance screenings, leading to localized campus standoffs and police probes.
Following the broadcast, the Indian government and right-wing organizations initiated a series of aggressive retaliatory measures, labeled by the administration as routine procedures but widely criticized by international watchdogs as a crackdown on press freedom.
On February 14, 2023, India’s Income Tax Department executed a three-day “tax survey” (raid) at the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai. Officials cloned laptops, seized phones, and alleged that the BBC had underreported international transfer pricing and remitted undisclosed income.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) opened an official probe into the BBC for alleged violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
Rightwing groups, such as the NGO Justice on Trial, dragged the BBC into Indian courts, alleging that the documentary defamed India and its judicial system, claiming the Supreme Court of India had already given clean chit to PM Narendra Modi in Gujarat riots.
BBC on the other hand, insulated itself from future foreign ownership cracks and compliance crackdowns under India’s strict Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) caps for digital media (which limits foreign investment to 26%), It radically altered its corporate structure in India.
The BBC spun off its Indian broadcast operations into a completely separate, independent, Indian-owned company called the Collective Newsroom. By executing this structure, the Indian entity handles the localized production and regulatory compliance, while the core BBC remains a client purchasing the content. This effectively shields the wider BBC brand from direct legal and financial vulnerability under domestic Indian laws.
During the tax raids, the BBC cooperated fully, instructing its staff to answer operational and salary queries transparently while legally maintaining bounds over personal financial data.
Rather than fleeing the market, the BBC contested the arbitrary tax penalties. In August 2026, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) partially sided with the broadcaster, reducing the punitive taxable profit rate imposed by the government from 15% to 12%.
Withdrawal of the defamation lawsuit is an important development, because it has preserved its right to bring a fresh lawsuit again. (IPA Service)
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