Salman Rushdie On Ventilator After Being Stabbed

Salman Rushdie On Ventilator After Being Stabbed
Booker prize winning-author Salman Rushdie was stabbed on Friday while giving a lecture in New York. He suffered multiple wounds and has now been put on a ventilator.

Rushdie was set to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York on Friday, when a man stabbed him as he was being introduced. The attacker, later identified as 24-year-old Hadi Matar, was then overpowered by the police.

According to his book agent Andrew Wylie 'the news was not good'. "Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged," he added.

While the police have not yet confirmed any motive or charges, they are in the process of obtaining search warrant to examine a backpack and electronic devices found at the site.

A prolific author, Indian-born Muslim Rushdie has suffered years of threats after the publishing of his book The Satanic Verses, which was considered by many Muslims to be blasphemous, and was banned in many Islamic countries.

Rushdie went into hiding for nearly a decade after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then-Iran’s supreme leader, pronounced a fatwa calling for the death of the author and anyone involved in the book’s publication. A hefty bounty was placed on his head.