Hyderabad: BRS students detained for planning to screen BBC docu in OU

Hyderabad: Members of the students wing of ruling BRS were taken into custody for allegedly planning to screen the controversial BBC documentary on 2002 Gujarat riots, inside the Osmania University campus here "without permission". Six members of the students' organisation, who gathered in front of the Arts College on the campus on Wednesday and planned to organise the screening "without permission" were detained and later let off, police said on Thursday. "They did not screen the documentary. They were planning (to do so).... As they had no permission (to screen the documentary) they were immediately taken into preventive custody," a senior police official said.

The Centre had recently blocked access to the documentary titled "India: The Modi Question" on social media platforms like YouTube.

On January 26, the Students Federation of India (SFI) had organised the screening of the BBC documentary at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) here even as the RSS' student wing, ABVP played the controversial film 'The Kashmir Files', on the campus. Earlier, the Fraternity Movement in UoH campus, a students' group, had organised the screening of the BBC documentary on January 21, at the UoH campus without prior notice or permission, prompting the University authorities to seek a report on the incident for taking necessary action.

The Ministry of External Affairs has trashed the documentary as a "propaganda piece" that lacks objectivity and reflects a colonial mindset. The two-part documentary claims it investigated certain aspects relating to the 2002 Gujarat riots when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of the state.