Avani Dias, the South Asia bureau chief of Australia’s national broadcaster ABC News, has alleged that the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it “too difficult” for her to report from the country. In a series of tweets and a podcast episode, Dias said that she was informed by an official from India’s Foreign Ministry that her visa would not be renewed and that she would have to leave the country in a couple of weeks. She was reportedly told that the decision was prompted by her coverage of the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist leader who was shot dead in Canada last year.
Nijjar’s killing strained ties between India and Canada after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government had credible evidence of the involvement of Indian operatives in the assassination. India has denied the allegations.
Dias said that she was also told that her election accreditation would not come through because of an Indian ministry directive. She left India on the first day of voting in the national election, which Modi has called “the mother of democracy.”
In her podcast episode, Dias said that it had become too difficult to do her job in India. She said that she was struggling to get into public events run by Modi’s party and that the government wouldn’t even give her the passes she needed to cover the election.
“It’s by design,” Dias said. “The Narendra Modi government has made me feel so uncomfortable that we decided to leave.”
The decision to allegedly block Dias’s visa came after the Indian government issued a notice to YouTube to take down an episode of Foreign Correspondent, the ABC’s flagship international news programme, where she reported on Nijjar’s killing.
“Now when you try to watch it on YouTube in India, it says, ‘This content is currently unavailable in this country because of an order from the government related to national security or public order,'” Dias said on her podcast, adding that similar work from other publications had also been “taken down” earlier.
An Indian government source has called the allegations “misleading and mischievous,” according to NDTV. The source said that Dias was found to have violated visa rules while undertaking her professional pursuits.
“Inspite of this, on her request, she was assured that her visa would be extended for the coverage of the general elections,” the source said. “Her previous visa was valid till 20th April 2024.”
ABC managing director David Anderson said that the broadcaster stood by Dias’s reporting.
“The ABC fully backs and stands by the important and impactful reporting by Avani Dias during her time as ABC correspondent in India,” he said. “Avani joins the Four Corners team as a reporter in coming weeks. The ABC believes strongly in the role of independent journalism across the globe, and freedom of the press outside Australia.”
Dias’s departure comes amid rising concerns over India’s crackdown on the media. Foreign journalists and news organisations have reported coming under increased pressure from the Modi government, which has used its discretion over grant and renewal of visas as a stick against them.
Last year, tax authorities raided the offices of BBC in Delhi and Mumbai after the British broadcaster aired a documentary investigating Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots that killed 800 Muslims and 200 Hindus. Modi was the state’s chief minister at the time.
There are currently at least seven journalists in jail in India, according to a 2023 report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. In January this year, French journalist Vanessa Dougnact announced she was leaving India after almost two decades. Dougnact claimed that she was being prevented from working as a journalist in the country despite having Overseas Citizenship of India, a form of permanent residency, because the government deemed her reporting “malicious and critical.”
The World Press Freedom Index 2022 ranked India 161 among 180 countries in 2023.
