NEW DELHI, Jan  27, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - Indian police on Friday detained

students in New Delhi after stopping the screening of a BBC documentary on
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's role during deadly sectarian riots in 2002.

The students at Delhi University had followed several campuses around the
country in staging a broadcast, defying government efforts to stop its spread
by blocking its publication on social media.

Police swarmed the university after student groups supportive of Modi's
ruling party objected to the screening, seizing laptops and imposing a ban on
assemblies of more than four people.

Police officer Sagar Singh Kalsi told Indian news channel NDTV that 24
students were detained.

The two-part BBC programme alleges that Modi had ordered police to turn a
blind eye to deadly riots while he was chief minister of Gujarat state.

The violence began after 59 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a fire on a
train. Thirty-one Muslims were convicted of criminal conspiracy and murder over
that incident.

At least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in the unrest that followed.
The documentary quoted a previously classified British foreign ministry
report which said the violence was "politically motivated" and the aim "was to
purge Muslims from Hindu areas".

The report also claims that the riots were impossible "without the climate
of impunity" created by Modi's administration.

India has dismissed the series as a "hostile" propaganda piece and ordered
big social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube to block sharing or
streaming it under controversial information technology laws.

Earlier this week, authorities at New Delhi's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru
University also banned an attempted screening and warned of "strict
disciplinary action" if the edict was ignored.
But defiant groups of students there and at numerous college campuses
across India have gathered to watch the documentary on laptops and phone
screens.

Modi ran Gujarat from 2001 until his election as prime minister in 2014 and
briefly faced a travel ban by the United States over the violence.

An investigation team appointed by the Indian Supreme Court to probe the
role of Modi and others in the violence said in 2012 it did not find any
evidence to prosecute him.