The Kerala High Court on Thursday orally asked a lawyer why he failed to notice a written disclaimer regarding the ill effects of smoking mentioned at the back of Booker prize winner Arundhati Roy’s recently-released book Mother Mary Comes To Me, whose cover photo shows her smoking a bidi.
The petitioner lawyer Rajasimhan had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) before the court on September 18, seeking a stay on the sale of the book whose cover photo shows her smoking a ‘bidi’. He had alleged that it did not have any statutory health-hazard warning label and that this was a violation of Section 5 of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2013.
During the hearing, a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Nitin Jamdar and Justice Basant Balaji told the petitioner that he did not even show a copy of the book to the court, to which he said that he had taken a photo of the book’s cover at a book stall and that he did not see the disclaimer at the back of the book. The court asked him whether he wanted to argue on merits or still wanted to approach the authority concerned as specified in the Act, to ascertain whether this amounted to an infringement of the legislation.
The petitioner said that his grievance was about the image did not have a disclaimer on the front cover and that he was not worried about the book’s contents.
In an affidavit, the book’s publisher Penguin Random House India produced a photo of the back of the book which had mentioned the disclaimer ‘Any depiction of smoking in this book is for representational purposes only…’, which further mentioned that the publishing firm did not promote or endorse tobacco use. The firm also sought imposing of exemplary costs on the petitioner.
The case has been posted for hearing on October 7.
Published – September 25, 2025 09:45 pm IST
