Shekhar Kapur takes a dig at BBC's Kashmir reportage

Amid the debate around international media's reportage concerning Jammu and Kashmir and the aftermath of the abrogation of Article 370 in the state, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, in a recent tweet, took a potshot at the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Drawing parallels between Kashmir and Northern Ireland, Kapur asked the BBC why it refused to call Northern Ireland ‘British Occupied Ireland’ when it used the term 'India occupied Kashmir'.

"Hey @BBCWorld...each time you call #kashmir 'India Occupied Kashmir' I keep wondering why you refuse to call Northern Ireland ‘British Occupied Ireland’?" tweeted Kapur on August 11.

While he was backed by many, a number of Twitter users jumped in to point out that the comparison between the two was flawed and that the BBC refers to the region as 'Indian Administered Kashmir' and not as 'India Occupied Kashmir'.

A former BBC editor Rifat Jawaid, defending the broadcaster, said:

The BBC, on August 10, posted a video that showed the locals in Srinagar's Soura pelting stones at the army in a protest on August 9 and firing could be heard in the background.

The Indian government initially refuted the incident reported by the BBC and other international publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera and Reuters, claiming that the Valley was calm.

The BBC had then issued a statement saying that it stood by its journalism and that the broadcaster was covering the situation 'impartially and accurately'.

It was only on August 13 that the Ministry of Home Affairs came out and confirmed the stone-pelting incident but explicitly stated that no bullets had been fired since the abrogation of Article 370.