Raju Ramachandran, a senior lawyer, said he found the suggestion “a bit extreme.”

“All the High Court is saying is that this particular petition has become infructuous (invalid) since the notice could not be found,” he said. “This did not give the petitioner the right to import the book. »

Senior lawyer Sanjay Hegde said the book could have been published in India if “someone had the courage to print it”, as only its importation was banned, not its publication.

“But after all the hubbub, no one wanted to print it in India.”

In 2012, the Rajasthan state government requested the arrest, external by four Indian authors – Hari Kunzru, Ruchir Joshi, Amitava Kumar and Jeet Thayil – after downloading some passages from The Satanic Verses and reading them at a literary festival in the city.

At the time, many jurists believed that downloading a book whose importation had been prohibited could not be considered a crime. But online copies of the book are difficult to find in India.

Rushdie, 76, continues to face threats for his outspoken views on Islam.

In 2022, he lost an eye and spent six weeks in the hospital after being stabbed up to 10 times on stage at an event in upstate New York. The suspect, Hadi Matar, was charged with attempted murder.

In his recent memoir, the writer criticized the reaction to his book, noting that “no duly authorized body (in India) had reviewed the book and there was no semblance of legal proceedings.”