Salman Rushdie on ventilator, may lose eye

Booker-winning author Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed on stage during a lecture, has been put on ventilator support. He is unable speak.

Salman Rushdie's official Andrew Wylie said in a statement that his health condition is not very well and Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, may lose an eye.

Earlier, Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the US. He was speaking at an event at the Shitokoya Institute in New York on Friday (August 12). An attacker stabbed him in the neck during his speech. He was later rushed to the hospital by air ambulance. The local police arrested a suspect named Hadi Matar (24) in connection with the stabbing.

Police say the assailant climbed onto the stage and attacked Rushdie and his interviewer. Rushdie was stabbed several times in the neck. Later, the police caught the attacker and took them into custody.

Andrew Wylie said, 'Salman may lose an eye. The nerve in his arm was severed and his stomach was damaged.'

The then supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini, issued a death warrant in the name of this novelist on February 14, 1989 for writing the book 'The Satanic Verses'. He had to stay in hiding for 9 years for this book.

Rushdie was attacked in Milan, Italy in the 1990s because of the same book. Not only that, Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of 'The Satanic Verses', was stabbed to death in a university in Tokyo.

The Indian-origin novelist rose to fame with Midnight's Children in 1981. It sold over a million copies in the UK alone.