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Notification banning Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses ‘untraceable’, Delhi HC disposes of plea seeking book’s import

Declaring the plea as infructuous, a division bench of the court on November 5 recorded that it has no other option “except to presume that no such notification exists”.

Rushdie’s book was released in 1988 by London-based Viking/Penguin Group and was not allowed to reach Indian readers owing to the CBIC’s notification, Khan, claiming to be a book lover, had submitted. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The Delhi High Court has disposed of a plea challenging the 1988 ban by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) on the import of author Salman Rushdie’s book, ‘The Satanic Verses’. This comes after the CBIC failed to produce the said notification of the ban dated October 5, 1988, and admitted before the bench that it “is untraceable”.

Declaring the plea as infructuous, a division bench of the court on November 5 recorded that it has no other option “except to presume that no such notification exists”. In light of the court’s observation, it clarified that the petitioner will be “entitled to take all actions in respect of the said book as available in law.”

The petitioner, Sandipan Khan, represented by advocate Uddyam Mukherjee, moved the Delhi HC in 2019 after he was unable to import the book on account of it being banned. He was also told by various bookstores that the book is not allowed to be sold in India and that the said book is not published in India.

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Khan, in his petition, 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.

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Khan had contended that the notification was neither available on the website of the authorities nor was it available with the authorities. Among other respondent parties in the petition were the secretary of the Department of Revenue under the Ministry of Finance and the home secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs. In November 2022, the authorities had admitted before the court that the “said notification is untraceable, and, therefore, could not be produced.”

Taking into account the peculiar situation, the bench ruled, “From the aforesaid, what emerges is that none of the respondents could produce the said notification dated 05.10.1988 with which the petitioner (Khan) 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… In 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.”

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