India’s three-decade ban on the import of Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel The Satanic Verses has effectively been lifted following a court ruling that the government could not produce the original notification enforcing the ban. The book was banned in 1988 after some Muslims deemed it blasphemous. The Delhi High Court considered a case from 2019 challenging this import ban.

In a court order dated November 5, the government informed the Delhi High Court that the ban order was “untraceable and, therefore, could not be produced.” Consequently, the court concluded that it had to “presume that no such notification exists.” Uddyam Mukherjee, the lawyer for petitioner Sandipan Khan, stated, “The ban has been lifted as of November 5 because there is no notification.”

Khan filed his plea after being informed by bookstores that the novel could not be sold or imported in India, and he was unable to find any official record of the import ban on government websites. He highlighted that even in court, the government could not provide the order. The November 5 ruling noted, “None of the respondents could produce the said notification … the purported author of the said notification has also shown his helplessness in producing a copy,” referring to a customs department official.

Rushdie’s novel stirred global controversy shortly after its September 1988 release, with some Muslims viewing certain passages about Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous. This led to violent protests and book burnings around the world, including in India, which has the third-largest Muslim population. In 1989, Iran’s then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s assassination, forcing the Booker Prize-winning author into hiding for six years.

In August 2022, more than three decades after the fatwa, Rushdie was attacked on stage during a lecture in New York, resulting in the loss of sight in one eye and impairing one of his hands.