Rushdie Accuses Cops Of 'Kidnap Plot' Ruse

Author Salman Rushdie has accused Indian police of making up an underworld plot to assassinate him that forced him to pull out of a literary festival in Jaipur.

Rushdie withdrew from the event in the state capital of Rajasthan, after being warned by Indian officials that paid gunmen were heading to the city to kill him.

The 65-year-old's visit to northwest India had been opposed by hardline Muslim groups, who consider his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, to be blasphemous.

But Rushdie said that he now believed the supposed plot - apparently linked to Mumbai criminal gangs - had been invented to keep him away from the festival to avoid controversy.

"I've investigated, and believe that I was indeed lied to," he said.

"I am outraged and very angry," Rushdie said on Twitter after newspaper reports that Rajasthan police had concocted the death threat.

The Satanic Verses, which remains banned in India, is seen by many Muslims worldwide as insulting their religion.

The author, who was born in Mumbai, spent a decade in hiding after Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for his death over the novel.

Fellow authors at the Jaipur festival, which draws tens of thousands of Indian and foreign visitors, expressed their opposition to the campaign to stop Rushdie appearing.

Writers Hari Kunzru and Amitava Kumar read out passages of The Satanic Verses from the stage on Friday.

Rushdie appeared at the festival without incident in 2007 but this year Muslim activists lobbied for him to be banned.

That raised fears of angry protests and security problems at the scenic venue in the gardens of an old palace.

US chat show queen Oprah Winfrey and biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins are among more than 250 speakers at the popular five-day event.

Rushdie had been due to talk about his 1981 novel Midnight's Children, which won that year's Booker Prize and was named in 1993 to have been the best novel to have won the prize in its 25-year history.

Rajasthan police declined to comment on Rushdie's accusations, although they did say a member of the public had made an official complaint against the authors who had read out parts of The Satanic Verses.