127 cuts for Punjab ’95 shows institutional paranoia

Diljit Dosanjh in a still from Honey Trehan's Punjab '95 | YouTube screengrab

In 1995, Punjab Police abducted Jaswant Singh Khalra from outside his home in Amritsar. Thirty years later, India’s Central Board of Film Certification has abducted him all over again, this time from cinema screens. The CBFC is demanding 127 cuts to Honey Trehan’s Punjab ’95, a film about the human rights activist who documented extrajudicial killings at the peak of the insurgency in 1990s Punjab. The strategy – then, as now – remains consistent: disappear the inconvenient and erase the documented.

Punjab ’95, produced by Ronnie Screwvala, has been trapped in bureaucratic purgatory since December 2022, when it was first submitted to the CBFC. The film is anchored by Diljit Dosanjh as Khalra, and Arjun Rampal as the dedicated Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officer who led the investigation into his disappearance. The CBFC took several months to respond, and then demanded 21 cuts. Since then, the film has been viewed several times by the Revising Committee (the first viewing is by the Examining Committee), and the number of proposed cuts stands at 127.

Trehan claims that there has been no dialogue with the CBFC, nor any explanation for the cuts, despite the filmmakers having filed multiple documents that support the events in the film. “They have just dictated terms,” Trehan told me over the phone. “But the CBFC’s remit is to certify films, not to control the narrative.” The CBFC, he argues, is meant to be an independent body, and “cannot be colour-coordinated with the government of the day.”

The list of deletions is a distillate of institutional paranoia. Trehan was told to remove references to the places where the events took place, like Tarn Taran, Durgiana, and Patti, as well as the figure of 25,000 presumed killed. The makers were also instructed to delete court-verified crime scenes, and do away with any references to Punjab Police, the Gurbani, the Indian flag, or even a passing mention of Indira Gandhi in a title slate. “But all of this is in the public domain,” Trehan said. “The six men responsible for Khalra’s murder have been sentenced by our courts. If anything, it shows our Constitution being upheld!”

That argument has done little for a film that, three years later, remains in limbo. Punjab ’95 was even selected for the Toronto International Film Festival’s prestigious Gala Presentations section in September 2023, only to be withdrawn by the producers at the last minute. Trehan had mounted a legal challenge in the Bombay High Court, which resulted in further delays. Eventually, the director said, they were forced to withdraw the case as well.

A devastating, slow-burn thriller

I watched Punjab ’95 during a private screening recently. At two-and-a-half hours, it unfolds with the momentum of a slow-burn thriller, even though everyone knows the contours of this story. Trehan’s direction is spare, unflinching, and never descends into sentimentality despite the film’s tragic events. He was clear that he didn’t want to make a conventional biopic, and wanted to keep his audience engaged. “I took many scenes rather slowly. For instance, Arjun’s interrogation with the cops and eyewitnesses,” he said. “We live in such a fast-paced world, so I really wanted these things to register.” The film’s power lies in its restraint, even when what’s unfolding on screen is brutal, making it all the more devastating.

Trehan embarked upon Punjab ’95 while quarantined during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when he discovered Amandeep Sandhu’s Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines. The book’s chapter on disappearances, titled ‘Laashaan’ (dead bodies), rekindled Trehan’s connection to a story he had grown up with. “Even today, Khalra’s portrait is kept in the Golden Temple. That’s the kind of honour and respect he has been accorded,” he said. For Trehan, who belongs to the same Tarn Taran district as Khalra, the activist holds a status equivalent to Bhagat Singh in Punjab’s pantheon of martyrs. He took the call to make the film on 6 September that same year, which also happened to be the anniversary of Khalra’s abduction.

What followed was two years of meticulous research: meetings with Khalra’s family, consultations with his lawyer RS Bains, and studying court records to ensure absolute fidelity to documented events. The family, according to Trehan, had closely guarded the rights to Khalra’s life and even signed a contract with the makers, retaining final approval on the film. For Trehan, staying faithful to Khalra’s story was more than a moral obligation.

Too dangerous an idea

If the CBFC’s skittishness is any indication, even the idea of Jaswant Singh Khalra is too dangerous for an Indian state that needs a few fictions to remain propped up. The bank director wielded a subversive weapon; the state’s own records turned against itself. His approach to documenting the deaths of Punjab’s civilians was extremely simple: He cross-referenced municipal cremation logs with firewood purchases to expose a policy of industrial-scale murder among Punjab’s police. This forensic precision terrified power structures because it is constitutionally unassailable. Khalra’s methodology continues to find resonance in the work of activists and NGOs today.

Punjab ’95 captures a sense of terror and not knowing that pervaded the state during the 1990s. Amandeep Sandhu recalls how his classmates would gather around to recount the number of people who went missing in their neighbourhoods. “The fear of the police was greater than the fear of militants,” he told me. “There has been a systemic obliteration of Sikh voices in Punjab.”

That obliteration extends to other films about the state. The most famous example of this is Udta Punjab (2016), a film on which Trehan served as the casting director. It faced 94 cuts before release, but was eventually released with only one cut. Other films have not been so lucky: Toofan Singh (2016), based on the life of a Sikh militant, was banned entirely in India. Kaum De Heere (2014), met a similar fate for allegedly glorifying Indira Gandhi’s assassins. Five years later, however, the Delhi High Court cleared the film for release.

It’s especially infuriating when you know that Punjab has provided Bollywood with decades of “content” – a salubrious background for filmy fantasies or comic relief in the form of loud, bumbling sidekicks. But its harshest tragedies – the Partition, Operation Blue Star, and the decade of insurgency – remain untouchable. Trehan pointed out that films like The Kashmir Files (2022), The Kerala Story (2023), The Sabarmati Report (2024), and Emergency (2025), representing four different states, continue to be released without any concerns about unrest in the respective states that they depict. “I respect the freedom of speech of each of these filmmakers. But if law and order can be controlled in Kashmir or Gujarat, why is it that only Punjab’s law and order cannot be controlled? These are the questions which disturb me, but the CBFC has no reply to them. Who should I ask?”

A few days ago, an elementary school named after Jaswant Singh Khalra opened in Fresno, California. Yet, the same man’s legacy is deemed too inflammatory for Indian screens. Trehan is still hoping for a path for the film that does not involve him slashing it. “If we have to edit the film according to the CBFC’s list of cuts, then Diljit and I will not lend our name to it,” he told me. “I feel CBFC should take the credit for that film. We can only stand by our conscience.”

Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)