The Supreme Court on Friday declined to entertain a petition that sought a fresh ban on Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel The Satanic Verses, nearly four decades after its prohibition in India.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta heard the matter and dismissed the plea at the threshold. “You are effectively challenging the judgment of the Delhi High Court,” the bench observed while rejecting the petition.
The petition, filed through advocate Chand Qureshi, had claimed that the book was still available in the country due to a November 2024 order of the Delhi High Court. In that ruling, the High Court had closed proceedings in a case challenging the Rajiv Gandhi government’s 1988 decision to ban the import of The Satanic Verses, noting that since authorities could not produce the relevant notification, it must be presumed that no such order exists.
The Supreme Court, however, found no merit in reopening the issue and declined to intervene.
The Centre had originally banned the import of the Booker Prize-winning author’s novel in 1988 on law-and-order grounds, after widespread protests across the world where many Muslim groups deemed the book blasphemous.
With Friday’s order, the apex court has effectively endorsed the Delhi High Court’s stand, leaving the nearly four-decade-old controversy over Rushdie’s book where it stood.
