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Salman Rushdie has expressed his "outrage" following a report in The Hindu that claims that his personal safety would be under threat if he attended the Jaipur Literary Festival were invented by Rajasthan police.
Rushdie withdrew from the Festival last week, saying he had been informed by intelligence sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld might be heading to Jaipur to attack him.
"While I have some doubts about the accuracy of this intelligence, it would be irresponsible of me to come to the Festival in such circumstances," he said, in a statement announcing his withdrawal from the event.
But on Twitter this weekend he described himself as "outraged and very angry" after investigating the claims made in The Hindu and finding that he had been lied to by Rajasthan police. The Rajasthan government has denied Rushdie's charge, calling it "baseless", according to a BBC report.
Several authors read passages from Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses at the Festival to show support. Among them was Hari Kunzru, who later confirmed that he had left India following the reading after being informed he risked arrest as a consequence. The Satanic Verses is banned in India.
Meanwhile Sri Lankan debut novelist Shehan Karunatilaka won the $50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2012, awarded at the Festival, for his cricketing novel Chinaman.
Published by Random House, India, and by Jonathan Cape in the UK, the novel is a "portrait of a lost way of life", using the sport to look at Sri Lanka "in a fresh and exciting way".
Jury chair Ira Pande said the decision was unanimous. "The winning title is a brilliant narration of all that is both great and sad about South Asia and in that sense it brings a world to the reader that needs to be seen outside this region... both a portrait of a lost way of life and a glimpse into the future this vast and vivid region is fated to occupy," Pande said.