BBC edits out mentions of Indian terrorist Kulbhushan from Asad Umar’s interview

ISLAMABAD: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is facing severe criticism for omitting the statement of Pakistani Finance Minister Asad Umar about Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian terrorist, from his recorded interview, triggering the conspiracy.
In an interview with BBC’s Stephen Sackur for the well-known show Hardtalk, the finance minister responded to several questions regarding various national issues.
However, the talk of Umar about Jadhav, who was awarded death sentence by a military court in 2017 over espionage charges, was edited out from the TV version of the interview.
Later, the whole interview carrying the Jadhav issue discussion was aired on BBC’s radio, showing the difference between it and the TV version of the interview.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the ruling party, also raised the issue of the censorship of the interview by the BBC in a soft way on Twitter. It also shared the interview with mention of Jadhav in Umar’s discussion.
arlier today, Minister of Human Rights Shireen Mazari lambasted the BBC for allegedly censoring the interview and removing the part about Jadhav. She called it “typical bias” on the part of the broadcaster.
“Shameful how BBC censored and chopped off Asad’s mention of Indian spymaster Jhadav! Typical bias of BBC!” she wrote on Twitter. Another user also took aim at the programme host Sackur over the censorship.
After massive criticism from Pakistan Twiteratti, the British broadcaster issued a clarification on Twitter, stating: “The reason Kulbhushan Jadhav’s name was deleted from the TV version of the HARDtalk interview with Asad Umar has a simple technical explanation”.
It was not an act of censorship and that the part was deleted becasue the interview was too long to be aired on TV, the programme handler tweeted.
In another Tweet, it said” “His [Jadhav] name was omitted from the TV version. This was not an act of censorship, but clearly confusion has been caused”.
“…so we are happy to restore that short section to the TV broadcast and we’ll give the new programme an extra airing tonight as well as tomorrow morning,” read the tweet.
The social media users have also slammed the BBC when it came forward with a clarification.