BBC telecasts Nirbhaya documentary 'India's Daughter'

Photo: Imtiyaz Khan /HT Photo

Despite the government’s outrage protest and ban in India, BBC went ahead and telecasted controversial documentary on the December 16 Nirbhaya gang rape last night.

BBC in its response said that the ‘India’s Daughter’ documentary had handled the issue “responsibly”.

After the controversy in India, BBC advanced the show and aired on Wednesday night instead of showing it on International Women’s Day on 8^th March.

BBC said that the decision of advancing the show will enable people to see this “incredibly powerful documentary at the earliest opportunity”.

“This harrowing documentary, made with the full support and cooperation of the victim’s parents, provides a revealing insight into a horrific crime that sent shock waves around the world and led to protests across India demanding changes in attitudes towards women,” the BBC said in a statement.

Earlier on Wednesday, the parliament saw heated discussion over the Document made by British filmmaker Leslee Udwin in which she had taken interview of gangrape convict, Mukesh Singh, the driver of the bus, who blamed Nirbhaya for her brutal rape on December 16, 2012 by six men in a moving bus.

“Under no circumstances, this documentary will be allowed to be broadcast… government has taken necessary action and secured an order restraining the telecast of the film,” Union home minister Rajnath Singh told Parliament on Wednesday.

Also a Delhi court has restrained media from publishing, broadcasting, telecasting or uploading the interview on the internet.

Meanwhile, reacting to these developments, Leslee Udwin said that rape was a global issue not just for India but across the world.

“It wasn’t the incident that motivated me. If this had happened elsewhere and I had seen a groundswell of opinion, of people braving very unfriendly conditions to fight for the rights of women I would have gone there too, Udwin told Hindustan Times.

(Input from Times of India)