After "The Quilt" ("Lihaaf") was published in 1942, the homoeroticism depicted in the story caused a public scandal. Ismat Chughtai was brought before a judge in Lahore to defend herself against charges of obscenity.
Chughtai has written about the trial in her memoir Kaghazi Hai Pairahan (A Life in Words). In the lead-up to the trial, Chughtai traveled to Lahore and stayed with the author Aslam Sahab, who advised her to apologize to the judge. Chughtai refused because her lawyer insisted she would win her case. Chughtai told Sahab, "If I’ve committed a crime and innocent people have been lead astray, why should I escape punishment merely by tendering an apology? If I’ve committed the crime and if it’s proved, then only punishment can bring peace to my conscience."
Chughtai was on trial alongside Saadat Hasan Manto, whose story "Bu" was also facing obscenity charges. Allies of the authors tried to convince them to apologize to the judge, and offered to pay whatever penalties were incurred. But the authors were defiant. Chughtai's and Manto's lawyers asked witnesses to point out which words in the authors' stories were obscene. The tactic proved successful: witnesses could not point to specific words depicting sex acts or sexualized body parts because Chughtai's story was written from the naïve perspective of a child narrator and depictions of sexuality were suggestive, not explicit.
At the end of the trial, the judge called Chughtai into his anteroom to speak privately. He told her he had read most of her stories and they weren't obscene, just as "The Quilt" wasn't obscene. However, he said that Manto's writings were "littered with filth." Chughtai replied that the world was also littered with filth, and if it is raked up the filth "becomes visible and people feel the need to clean it up." The judge laughed in response.
In her memoir, Chughtai writes that she hadn't worried when the suit had been filed, and she didn't feel elation once she had won her case. She felt sad, however, because she thought it might be a long time before she had the chance to visit Lahore again.
