India's three-decade ban on importing author Salman Rushdie's controversial 'The Satanic Verses' book has effectively been lifted after a court said the government was unable to produce the original notification that imposed the ban.

The decadeslong ban of Salman Rushdie's “The Satanic Verses” in his native India is now in doubt — not because of a change of heart more than two years after the author’s near-fatal stabbing, but because of what amounts to some missing paperwork.