New Delhi: Diljit Dosanjh’s Satluj spent years fighting for censor approval. When it finally released on ZEE5 on 3 July, it couldn’t withstand the scrutiny and was pulled from the platform within two days.
Satluj narrates the story of Punjab’s darkest chapters from the 1990s through the lens of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra. The film traces Khalra’s decades-long pursuit of justice for more than 25,000 people who disappeared during Punjab’s insurgency-era crackdowns, many of them cremated without their families ever being informed.
“It’s shameful. The ban is shameful. This new generation deserves to know what happened in 1995. Satluj isn’t fabrication, it’s reality. I have seen it up close. When we left for work in the morning, our parents didn’t know if we would come back. We lived in fear, not for a day or two, but for years,” Balwant Bhatia, a 58-year-old senior advocate at the Mansa district court, told ThePrint.
Dosanjh plays Khalra, an ordinary bank employee who risked his life to expose the scale of state-sanctioned extrajudicial cremations. Satluj, originally titled Punjab 95, spent years tangled in red tape, awaiting clearance from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).
Bhatia questions why films are allowed to depict the Emergency, widely regarded as one of the darkest chapters in India’s history, while Satluj faces a ban, 35 years after Khalra’s alleged abduction and disappearance at the hands of the state.
“I have the answer too. The Emergency was nothing compared to what Punjab suffered under Beant Singh’s government and KPS Gill’s reign. They ran their government on a mountain of dead bodies,” Bhatia said, recalling the killing of one of his colleagues who he said had been hanged outside his bank.
“That was the first thing I saw when I reached my office. It sent chills down my spine.”
Ajai Sahni, author and counterterrorism expert, called the film a “mischief”.
“This is a political mischief because the elections are around the corner,” he told ThePrint.
“The film is the result of an uneducated attempt and wasn’t properly researched. The claim of 25,000 bodies is utter nonsense. With this film, you are trying to portray that everyone who died during this period was a martyr or a hero. It’s a foolish trap.”
Yes to Kashmir, no to Punjab?
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) also backs Dosanjh’s Satluj, saying if atrocities against Kashmiris can be depicted in films like The Kashmir Files (2022), then Satluj too deserves to be heard and seen.
“If Kashmir can get a voice, why not Punjab? If the atrocities against Kashmiris can be showcased in a film, why not Punjab?” SGPC spokesperson Jaskaran Singh told ThePrint.
Singh explains that banning Satluj will only compound the pain endured by the Sikh community. According to him, cases of extrajudicial killings have been chronically underreported, and new allegations continue to surface, some of which he says have proven to be true in Mohali’s CBI court.
“The Sikh community feels it hasn’t received justice. Suppressing and hiding it won’t stop the truth from coming out. It just can’t work that way. We want reconciliation and justice. And when someone makes a film to express that pain, you ban it. The government should at least show some compassion. That’s the bare minimum,” he said.
Official sources said that the film was banned over concerns that “anti-India forces” could exploit it. But Singh dismisses this argument, saying any such misuse would be a failure of the state intelligence and cannot be a reason to ban the film.
Dosanjh’s appeal
Early Monday, Dosanjh hosted an Instagram Live thanking fans for their support. He said that ‘once something is online, it can’t be erased,’ urging fans who have watched or downloaded the film to share it with others.
“I came live on Instagram to thank people for watching Satluj. What I feared actually happened. I thought the film might get taken down by Monday, but it happened even sooner than that. That’s exactly why we didn’t promote it; it made more sense to just let the film release online without any push. Today’s youth is talking about Jaswant Singh Khalra. Every household is talking about him,” Dosanjh said during the live session.
“You can trouble me all you want, I’m with Punjab till the day I die,” he added.
Dosanjh, however, is “happy and relieved” that the film has finally reached its audience.
He noted how in 1995 as well, people weren’t allowed to talk about it.
“Enough is enough! It’s honestly a bit disheartening, here we are in 2026, and we are still stuck at the same point,” Diljit said.
Reflecting on the hurdles the film faced from the get go, he added, “Our shoot got halted for 10 to 15 years. It took us another year and a half just to get the film going. Then, after the edit was done, it sat stuck for four years. I have been with this film for two years, but Honey paaji gave six years of his life to it.”
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)