Import ban lifted after 36 years, Rushdie’s Satanic verses to be available in Pune from Dec 30

Kolkata-based Sandipan Khan had filed a petition in 2019 to set aside the notification banning the import of the book. After government authorities failed to produce the notification in court, the Delhi High court ruled last month that it had to presume that “no such notification exists.”

The import of the controversial book was banned by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1988 after calls from Muslim clerics. Rushdie spent nearly 10 years in hiding in countries like the United Kingdom and United States of America after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, ordering Muslims to kill him and his editors and publishers. In 2022, Rushdie was stabbed in the face multiple times by a knife-wielding man named Hadi Matar as he was about to give a lecture in the USA.

However, other book stores have no immediate plan to stock it. Rohit Jerajani, owner of Express Book Service in Camp, said the store would not stock the book as it is risky and they did not want to get into political controversies. Vishal Pipraiya of the Pagdandi Book Store in Baner said he had no comment on the matter.

A senior employee at Crossword Pune told The Indian Express, “There is no India publisher for the book yet, so we do not have any information. We will not import the book. Only after it has an India publisher will we have the book on our shelves.”