NEW YORK: Indian-origin British author Salman Rushdie, who is undergoing treatment in the US after being attacked, has reportedly lost the sight of one eye and the use of one hand. This was clarified in an interview given by Rushdie's literary agent to an international media. Rushdie was seriously injured in an attack during an event in New York in August.

Rushdie was attacked by Hadi Matar (24), a native of New Jersey. Hadim, a US nation of Lebanese origin, stabbed him in the neck and stomach on stage in front of the audience. The people present there stopped Hadim and handed him over to the police. Salman Rushdie had death threats from Islamic fundamentalists.

Rushdie was attacked when he was preparing to give a lecture on 'US, a haven for exiled writers and artists, a place for creative freedom of expression.’ The anchor who tried to stop the attack was also injured. He sustained severe injuries in the attack including nerve damage in his arm. He was rushed to the hospital in a helicopter.

The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie a few months after "The Satanic Verses" was published. Some Muslims saw passages in the novel about the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.

Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, has lived with a bounty on his head, and spent nine years in hiding under British police protection.

While Iran's pro-reform government of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa in the late 1990s, the multimillion-dollar bounty hanging over Rushdie's head kept growing and the fatwa was never lifted.

Khomeini's successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying the fatwa against Rushdie was "irrevocable."

The man accused of attacking the novelist has pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges. He is being held without bail in a western New York jail.