Indian court overrules ban on Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses — because of a missing file

A court in India has overruled a decades-long import ban on author Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, because the government cannot find the original ruling.

India was the first of several nations to ban the book in 1988 due to its depiction of Islam and portrayal of Prophet Muhammad, which was considered blasphemous by many Muslims and sparked protests and death threats against the British-Indian author.

The ban was the subject of a 2019 petition filed against the Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs (CBIC) in the Delhi High Court. The petitioner, Sandipan Khan, challenged the constitutional validity of the CBIC's 1998 notification banning the import of the novel over its alleged blasphemous content under India's 1962 Customs Act.

Khan's petition claimed that the ban violated constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression and asked that he be granted permission to import the novel.

He had requested a copy of the notification that banned the import of the book, but was informed that the document could not be located, according to legal documents.

On several occasions between May 2019 and May 2024, the CBIC asked the Delhi High Court for more time to find the document. It ultimately told the court that "the notification was untraceable, and therefore, could not be produced", the legal documents show.

In the final hearing on the matter this week, the Delhi High Court ruled that it had "no other option except to presume that no such notification exists".

"The petitioner will, therefore, be entitled to take all actions in respect of the said book as available in law," said the ruling, which was issued on 5 November.

The ruling means that people in India will be allowed to import "The Satanic Verses", according to Indian media reports.

Rushdie said last month that he is writing a new work of fiction, a set of three novellas that will be his first publications since he survived a knife attack in New York in 2022.