If you haven’t heard about the issue going on with the Hindi-Punjabi film ‘Satluj’, then either you’re living under a rock or very removed from anything Indian.
Because for the past few days, practically every social media platform has been full of Indians of every walk of life coming out and speaking about this movie, either to critically acclaim it and its subject matter, or call out authorities for taking it down within just 48 hours of its OTT release.
What Is Happening With The Movie?
The movie, Satluj or Punjab ’95, is directed by Honey Trehan and stars musician and actor Diljit Dosanjh in the titular character of Jaswant Singh Khalra. The movie is set around the life of Khalra, a known human rights activist, particularly his investigation and findings related to the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, and the cremation of unidentified bodies during the Punjab insurgency period between 1984 and 1994.
His investigation found that some alleged 25,000 illegal killings could have taken place by the Punjab Police, with some 2,000 police officers who refused to take part also being killed. His investigations gained national attention. In 1995, Khalra was abducted from in front of his house by the police.
The movie ‘Satluj’ is more commonly known as ‘Punjab 95’ and has been circling around the Indian news for years now, with the makers trying to find some or any way to get it released for public viewing. The movie has been stuck in vicious cycles of bureaucracy since 2022, with some reason or another being brought up to stall its release.
In 2022, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) held the film, then titled ‘Ghallughara’ a term used for the overwhelming massacre of Sikhs for six months, and demanded 21 cuts.
The production house challenged this in Bombay High Court, and it was decided that the film would be released as ‘Punjab 95’. This also did not happen as another revising CBFC committee then demanded over 120 cuts, blocking its release and the YouTube trailer was also removed a day after it was posted.
Then, in 2023, a world premiere was scheduled to take place at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), but later the team pulled it from the line-up.
According to Variety, a source said that “there are political forces at play in the film being pulled from Toronto.”
Finally, after another three years of waiting by the CBFC to grant it a certificate for release, the movie, without any announcement, was dropped on Zee5 as a digital release, uncut, on July 3, under the name ‘Satluj’.
Trehan, in an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, said, “It was an endless cycle of: “Cut this, delete that, alter this section.” The frustrating part was that I wasn’t receiving any legitimate, logical explanations (from CBFC) as to why these cuts were being demanded.”
He added that in his last communication with CBFC, “The final count was upwards of 127 cuts. The last conversation we had took place around December 24, right when we were navigating the international release strategy”, and the CBFC told them, “The Delhi elections are around the corner, don’t do it now. We will let you know when to proceed.”
The director states that there was “total blackout” after that, with no response coming through despite several attempts at communication. However, the relief was short-lived as on July 5, Zee5 announced that ‘Satluj’ was no longer available for streaming in India.
In their statement, the OTT platform wrote, “In light of the current developments, ‘Satluj’ will be unavailable in India until further notice. We remain committed to exploring every appropriate avenue through due process to bring the film back to our audiences at the earliest opportunity.”
The movie before this, though, had been receiving positive reviews, with people claiming that this was an important topic to talk about and the life and sacrifices of Khalra and other people deserved attention.
Read More: Dalits Suffering In Punjab Due To Land
Who Was Jaswant Singh Khalra And What Did He Expose?
Jaswant Singh Khalra was born in 1952, living a comfortable life with his wife Paramjit Kaur Khalra and two kids, working as director of a bank in Amritsar, Punjab. It is unknown when exactly he started his investigative work, but a breakthrough came in 1994, and he eventually took his findings public in 1995 in a press note.
Now, it is important to understand that the period between 1984 and 1994 was one of the most volatile times for Punjab. The Operation Blue Star took place in 1984, followed by the assassination of Indira Gandhi in October the same year, which led to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and the Khalistan movement being at its height, with Sikh extremists carrying out assassinations of public personalities, with the Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh’s assassination being an infamous one.
However, in trying to control this rage of extremists from conducting terror in the state, the Punjab Police became a form of threat themselves, when they stated to reportedly violate human rights of regular citizens. An Amnesty International report claimed that the police were “illegally detaining, torturing and killing hundreds of young men”.
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report from 1991 claimed that security forces were using “increasingly brutal methods to stem the militant movement, resulting in widespread human rights violations.”
‘Staged’ Encounter killings were common as the police executed any person suspected to be a militant, while those detained were claimed to have “disappeared”.
This reportedly happened while alleged ‘supercop’ Kanwar Pal Singh (KPS) Gill was in his second tenure as the Director General of Punjab Police. In 1992, he was appointed as Chief of Police in Punjab by the Indian government
According to a 1993 report by The New York Times, “State officials dismiss accusations against the police, saying episodes of police brutality are aberrations.”
Patricia Gossman’s chapter “India’s Secret Armies,” in the book Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability, also mentioned how Gill had created a bounty system of rewards for police officers who killed militants; this included financial rewards up to Rs. 50,000.
In a 1992 report by India Today, Kanwar Sandhu wrote how “The rush for claiming cash rewards is turning the police into mercenaries.”
He further revealed how “besides the rewards for killing listed militants (annual outlay for the purpose: Rs 1.13 crore), the department gives ‘unannounced rewards’ for killing unlisted militants. Every week, the IGS of various ranges send their lists to Additional DG (Intelligence) O.P. Sharma. The amount can vary from Rs. 40,000 to Rs 5 lakh.”
It was during this time that Jaswant Singh Khalra started to investigate mass executions happening in Punjab. He initially started with looking into the whereabouts of acquaintances or people he knew that were picked up by the police for questioning but never returned home. This led him to look into three cremation grounds: Patti, Tarn Taran and Durgiana Mandir in Amritsar.
It was here he found that found firewood receipts showing how 300 kilograms of wood was used for a single body.
Taking this, he noticed a sudden increase in the number of ‘unidentified and unclaimed’ corpses cremated by the Punjab Police, the data to which he checked with records from the Municipal Committee of Amritsar, including names, age and addresses. The police, however, had claimed that the cremations were of unidentified individuals. This discrepancy led Khalra to believe that these were unlawful killings being covered up by the police.
He found that in Amritsar itself, over 2,000 such mass cremations had taken place. The final numbers came to around 25,000 cremations.
The Central Bureau of Investigation, in its investigations, also concluded that police had unlawfully cremated 2,097 people in Tarn Taran district alone.
Besides this, Khalra also looked into other cases, including the “custodial killing of Behla”, police using people as human shields, which resulted in the death of seven people, and the killing of around 2,000 police officers not taking part in these operations.
On 16 January 1995, Jaswant Singh Khalra issued a press release alleging that Punjab’s security forces had cremated thousands of unidentified and unclaimed bodies between 1984 and 1994. Around the same time, Khalra’s organisation filed a writ petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court requesting an independent investigation; however, the High Court dismissed it.
Khalra also presented his findings publicly, including to the Canadian House of Commons in April 1995, where he described exactly how he had traced the murders.
Khalra was then abducted by Punjab police from outside his home on September 6, 1995, while he was washing his car, in broad daylight, in full view of several witnesses from a busy residential area. He was then detained and tortured, although the police denied any such allegations. Khalra was never seen in public again.
Soon after, Supreme Court judge Justice Kuldip Singh received a telegram sent by Gurcharan Singh Tohra, a senior Shiromani Akali Dal leader, about Khalra’s kidnapping by the Punjab Police. Khalra’s wife, Paramjit Kaur, also appealed to the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution seeking her husband to be produced in court.
The investigation was taken up by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which found nine Punjab police officials to be behind the abduction. The SC then expanded the probe, taking up the press note issued by the Human Rights Wing of the Shiromani Akali Dal and signed by Khalra and JS Dhillon about the cremations of the missing people.
The CBI in their report submitted in December 1996, finally revealed that “585 bodies had been fully identified, 274 partially identified and 1,238 remained unidentified” as per an NDTV report.
The CBI also recommended that the accused police officials should be prosecuted for murder and kidnapping. However, no action was taken until 10 years later; six of the nine accused, one of whom had been murdered in 1997, were convicted of Khalra’s kidnapping and murder on November 18, 2005.
Two of the accused, Deputy Superintendent Jaspal Singh and Amarjit Singh. were given life imprisonment, while the other 4 were given seven years of jail. In 2007, a division bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court extended the imprisonment of the rest of the four, Satnam Singh, Surinder Pal Singh, Jasbir Singh (all former sub-inspectors) and Prithipal Singh (former head constable), to life as well when the accused appealed their sentence.
They tried to file an appeal with the Supreme Court in 2011; however, in a landmark judgement, the SC upheld the High Court’s verdict.
The SC bench chaired by Justices B. S. Chauhan and P. Sathasivam confirmed that Khalra was “working on abduction and cremation of unclaimed/unidentified bodies during the disturbed period in Punjab, particularly in districts Amritsar and Taran Taran”.
The court also said that Khalra’s investigation had found how the police were “eliminating the young persons under the pretext of being militants and were disposing of their dead bodies without maintaining any record and without performing their last rites”.
They added that Khalra was targeted because the “local police did not like it [his investigation] and hatched a conspiracy to abduct him.” The court also recounted his final days, based on the testimony of Special Police Officer Kuldip Singh, where they stated that Khalra was “very weak and fragile and was having scratch marks on his body” given by officials beating him up.
The court added that “while blood was oozing from his body,” it was kept in a van’s trunk and then “thrown in the canal” of the Harike Wetland.
The court then gave scathing remarks to the police officials, stating, “police excesses and the maltreatment of detainees… encourages the men in ‘khaki’ to consider themselves to be above the law and sometimes even to become a law unto themselves”.
They also stated how Punjab Police “united in an unholy alliance as their colleagues were involved and the case was going to tarnish the image of Punjab police” and that “fake criminal cases” were lodged against witnesses to stop them from testifying.
Even though Khalra’s body was never recovered, the SC upheld that since the proof of the abduction was grounds enough for the conviction.
The court said, “In such a fact-situation, the courts below have rightly drawn the presumption that the appellants were responsible for his abduction, illegal detention and murder.”
Director Honey Trehan, in a 2025 interview with Kumal Kamra while speaking about his discussions with the CBFC, said, “The head of the revising committee said, ‘Everything you’ve said is true, but who speaks the truth so loudly?'”
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Hollywood Reporter India, The Print, Hindustan Times
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