Amnesty International has condemned what it described as an “assault on civil society” in India after its office in the south of the country was raided by tax authorities.
Amnesty India’s bank accounts have been frozen after tax investigators spent more than 10 hours searching the Bangalore headquarters of the London-based organisation on Thursday.
Staff were ordered to remain in the office, shut their laptops and not use their mobile phones during the search, an Amnesty statement said.
India’s enforcement directorate said in a press release it believed Amnesty had received £3.8m in foreign funding without permission.
Narendra Modi’s government has blocked more than 19,000 NGOs from receiving funds from overseas for violations ranging from not filing the appropriate paperwork to engaging in “activities not conducive to the national interest”. It says it has reduced the total flow of foreign funds from £1.6bn in 2014 to £691m last year.
Overseas funding of charities is an object of suspicion to many in India’s political establishment, who accuse NGOs of pushing foreign influence, stymieing economic growth and coercing people to convert from Hinduism – a highly sensitive issue, especially to the country’s powerful Hindu nationalist movement.
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