Speaking to The Indian Express on Friday, Munro said: “It’s not nice for any organisation to have that sort of scrutiny, uninvited as it were. But everybody knows that we’ve got a responsibility to obey the law and that’s what we’ll do… We are here to obey the law and comply with all the regulations and cooperate with anything that needs to be dealt with.”

In a statement after the surveys on February 14-16, the BBC had said: “We will continue to cooperate with the authorities and hope matters are resolved as soon as possible… The BBC is a trusted, independent media organisation and we stand by our colleagues and journalists who will continue to report without fear or favour.”

Munro, who is in India for the fourth edition of the BBC Sportswoman of the Year Award, said, “That day, our primary concern was, is everybody okay, and everybody was okay.” The primary concern was to retain all output and get back on air unaffected, he said. While having people in the office asking questions is disruptive, he said: “They were legally entitled to do it. They were very polite and it was all very dignified.”

After the surveys, the Income Tax department had said it had found “several discrepancies and inconsistencies with regard to transfer pricing documentation” and the income and profits shown by various BBC group entities were “not commensurate with the scale of operations” in India.

The tax department’s action came weeks after the British broadcaster had, on January 17, released a documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots. On January 20, the central government ordered YouTube and Twitter to take down links sharing the documentary, with officials saying it was found to be “undermining the sovereignty and integrity of India” and had “the potential to adversely impact” the country’s “friendly relations with foreign states” and “public order within the country”.

“It wasn’t a shock to us that there were people who took issue with the programmes, of course,” said Munro. The BBC had reached out to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office, as is standard practice, and it was disappointing that he declined the invitation, he said. “Whenever you talk about anybody, we always give them what’s known in the trade as a right to reply,” he said. Asked why they chose Modi as the subject, he said: “If someone is in power for a lengthy period of time, by definition, they’re important global figures, and therefore, newsworthy. That goes with the territory of having authority on the global stage, and that’s important.”

“We’ve made documentaries about global leaders in lots of countries – including prime ministers of the UK, both past and present, including (Donald) Trump, (Joe) Biden, (Benjamin) Netanyahu or (Vladimir) Putin,” he said, adding, “We investigate, expose, question.” “Sometimes, when criticism comes in, you do have to say, they’ve got a point. But just because someone complains about it doesn’t make them right,” he said. “We have no agenda. We are publicly funded in the UK, so we’re not trying to deliver dividends to shareholders,” he said. “I have no idea how my colleagues vote politically. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. We don’t ask.”