Satanic Verses can now be ordered in India too, know what Delhi HC said on Rajvi Gandhi government’s decision to ban the import of the book.

A big news has come out about Britain’s famous writer Salman Rushdie. The Delhi High Court has closed hearing on a plea challenging the 1988 ban imposed by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) on the import of author Salman Rushdie’s book ‘The Satanic Verses’. This happened when the CBIC failed to produce the said notification of ban dated October 5, 1988 and admitted before the bench that the same was missing. The court said that the officials could not present the ban notification issued in 1988. In such a situation, it has to be assumed that there is no such notification. Declaring the petition frivolous, on November 5, a bench of Justices Rekha Palli and Saurabh Banerjee ordered that it has no option but to accept that no such notification exists.

Advocate Udyam Mukherjee, appearing for petitioner Sandipan Khan, had moved the Delhi High Court in 2019 after being unable to import the book due to it being banned. He was also told by various book shops that the book was not allowed to be sold in India and that the said book was not published in India. Rushdie’s book was released in 1988 by the London-based Viking/Penguin Group and Khan, who claims to be a book lover, had said that it was not allowed to reach Indian readers due to a CBIC notification.

It is noteworthy that in 1988, the Rajiv Gandhi government had banned the import of the Booker Prize winning author’s book citing law and order. Khan, in his petition, sought a direction to the court to declare the notification issued under the Customs Act, 1962, banning the import of the book into India, as unconstitutional and quash it. Khan also sought that the court declare that he can proceed to import the book from its publisher/international reseller or from Indian or international e-commerce websites and such action would not violate the CBIC notification.