A petition contesting the Rajiv Gandhi government’s 1988 decision to prohibit the import of Salman Rushdie’s contentious book “The Satanic Verses” has been closed by the Delhi High Court, which stated that it must be assumed that the relevant notification does not exist because authorities have not produced it.
A bench led by Justice Rekha Palli noted in a ruling dated November 5 that the case, which had been ongoing since 2019, was therefore infructuous and that the petitioner would be entitled to pursue any legal action over the book.
For law-and-order grounds, the Centre prohibited the importation of the Booker Prize-winning author’s “The Satanic Verses” in 1988 because Muslims worldwide deemed it to be blasphemous.
In court, petitioner Sandipan Khan claimed that he was unable to import the book because the Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs had banned its importation in accordance with the Customs Act on October 5, 1988. However, the book was not accessible on any official website or from any of the relevant authorities.
“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,” the bench, also comprising Justice Saurabh Banerjee, observed.
“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,” it concluded.
The petitioner had attempted to overturn other relevant directives issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1988 in addition to contesting the prohibition notification.
Additionally, the petition had asked for permission to import the book via its publisher or foreign e-commerce sites.
Authorities had stated during the court proceedings that the notification could not be produced because it was untraceable.
