‘No Notification Exists’: HC Closes Plea Against 1988 Ban On Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has closed proceedings on a petition challenging the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government’s decision to ban the import of Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel ‘The Satanic Verses’, in 1998.

A bench headed by Justice Rekha Palli observed that the petition, which was pending since 2019, was infructuous and the petitioner would be entitled to take all actions in respect of the book.

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), which had imposed the ban, failed to produce the notification dated October 5, 1988, and admitted before the court that it is “untraceable”.

In his plea, Sandipan Khan sought the court’s directions to declare the notification issued under the Customs Act, 1962, banning the import of the book in India, to be unconstitutional, and quash and set it aside. Khan also sought that the court declare that he may proceed to import the book from its publisher/international reseller or Indian or international e-commerce websites and that such action shall not constitute a violation of CBIC’s notification.

However, Khan claimed that he was unable to import the book on account of a notification issued by the CBIC 26 years ago. He said the notification was neither available on the website nor with the officials.

“What emerges is that none of the respondents could produce the said notification dated 05.10.1988 with which the petitioner is purportedly aggrieved and, in fact, the purported author of the said notification has also shown his helplessness in producing a copy of the said notification during the pendency of the present writ petition since its filing way back in 2019,” said the bench, also comprising Justice Saurabh Banerjee.

“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 bench concluded.

The 76-year-old British-American author faced death threats since ‘The Satanic Verses’ was declared blasphemous by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

The book was banned by the Congress government in 1998 as it could lead to law and order problems.