BBC accused of 'extraordinary' censorship after cutting honour-killing references from radio drama for fear of offending Muslims

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, whose 2004 production Behzti was pulled from a Birmingham theatre after it sparked Sikh protests, has accused the Corporation of tampering with her work because it involved an honour killing.

Ms Bhatti's drama The Heart of Darkness will be played on Radio 4 this Friday as part of its popular DCI Stone series, but she says the BBC has caused an 'awful situation' which has led to a 'betrayal' of her work.

At the centre of her story is the honour killing of a 16-year-old Asian girl, and DCI Stone is told by his bosses to treat the case 'sensitively' because she is Muslim.

Although they have admitted removing dialogue from its afternoon drama, the BBC claims they did it to avoid 'potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes to honour killing'.

Describing the play's final line, Ms Bhatti told The Independent: 'At the end, a character says: "There is so much pressure in our community, to look right and to behave right." 

The compliance department came back and said, "we don’t want to suggest the entire Muslim community condones honour killings".

'It's a crucial part of that story. I was very disappointed given my previous experience of censorship. If you take out the line, the whole thing changes, it's a betrayal of the character and the truth of the unfolding story.

'It’s an extraordinary and awful situation. They said the lines were offensive but they absolutely were not. We live in a fear-ridden culture.' 

Controversial: Her episode of DCI Stone, starring Hugo Speer, is on Radio 4 on Friday but is missing key lines, she says, because of 'fear'

Bhatti, who also writes The Archers, was forced into hiding in 2004 after her play Behzti caused a storm.

It included a scene in a Gurdwara, a Sikh temple, which involved rape, physical abuse and murder. But the play did win her awards.

 

That year she received death threats, including a Christmas card that read: 'Seasons Greetings. This will be your last Christmas. You are a disgrace to the race. Sending you lots of hate.'

Row: A sign outside the Birmingham Rep Theatre in 2004 after the cancellation of the play Behzti because it sparked protests and led to its author getting death threats

The BBC said today the radio drama to be played on Friday was treated no differently than any other.

'This is a hard-hitting drama about the realities of honour killing in Britain. A single line in the script could be taken to infer that the pressure and motivation to commit such a crime in a family comes from the wider Muslim community, 

potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes to honour killing,' a Radio 4 spokesman said.

'Gupreet Kaur Bhatti was asked to amend this line in the normal editorial process of script development'.