Omission of Jadhav's mention from Pak minister interview 'not an act of censorship', says BBC

Islamabad: British public broadcaster BBC has defended the omission of Indian death row convict Kulbhushan Jadhav's mention from its interview with Pakistan's Finance Minister Asad Umar, saying it was "not an act of censorship".

In an interview to BBC's Stephen Sackur for the 'Hardtalk', the finance minister answered questions on various issues of national importance, including the state of Pakistan's economy and China Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The TV version of the interview, however, did not contain his mention of Jadhav, who was sentenced to death in 2017 by a Pakistani military tribunal on spying charges.

Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari criticised the BBC for deleting the part about Jadhav, terming 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 tweeted. BBC 'Hardtalk' on Twitter, however, clarified that Jadhav's name had been omitted from the TV version of the interview and not the radio version, and that it was not done to censor the minister's words.

"The reason Kulbhushan Jadhav's name was deleted from the TV version of the HARDtalk interview with Asad Umar has a simple technical explanation. The recorded interview was too long for our broadcast slot and so had to be edited. This was done separately for radio and TV," it tweeted.

"His 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," the broadcaster said.