New Delhi: The Delhi high court has allowed a petitioner to procure a copy of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, a book banned in 1988, after the Union government failed to furnish the original notification of the ban.
The 1988 book was Rushdie’s fourth novel and led to allegations of blasphemy against him. Shortly after India banned the book, deeming it offensive to Muslims, the supreme leader of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989. Rushdie, who has won the Booker Prize, has spent years in hiding and with a security cover. In August 2022, he was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and abdomen on stage at an event in the US. The attack left him blind in one eye and caused other lasting injuries.
A few days ago, on November 5, a bench of Justices Rekha Palli and Saurabh Banerjee of the Delhi high court said that the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs’ notification has not been procured by the Union government. It was issued in October 5, 1988; at that time Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister of the country.
The petitioner, Sandipan Khan, had moved court to procure the book in 2019.
“In the light of the aforesaid circumstances, we have no other option except to presume that no such notification exists, and therefore, we cannot examine the validity thereof and dispose of the writ petition as infructuous,” the court said.
It allowed Khan to take action pertaining to acquiring the book, as allowed by the law. “The petitioner will, therefore, be entitled to take all actions in respect of the said book as available in law.”
Advocate Uddyam Mukherjee argued for Khan that the notification was neither available on any government website nor available with any of the respondents.
In 2017, Khan was told in by the Union home ministry response to a Right to Information request that the book was indeed banned but that the notification was “untraceable, and therefore, could not be produced.”
