Satluj

“Hisaab toh Punjab ka hai hi complicated (Punjab has a complex history),” says Arjun Rampal’s CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) officer and the film’s narrator in Honey Trehan’s profoundly relevant Satluj. The director is in no mood to shy away from the state’s turbulent past or let the wrongdoers off the hook in this drama that has seen its share of trouble with the censors. Much like its real-life protagonist Jaswant Singh Khalra (played by Diljit Dosanjh), a human rights activist, Trehan has been resolute in his mission, refusing to flinch to the powers that be—in this case the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). His persistence paid off as Satluj, formerly titled ‘Punjab ’95’, finally released on ZEE5 in the iteration its creator wanted—though only briefly.

Few Indian films have had their very existence validated so completely by the forces they are fighting. Honey Trehan’s Satluj (formerly Panjab ’95) concerns a man who bravely sought to expose state-sanctioned cover-ups and justice for the victims’ families. It then languished for years, awaiting CBFC approval, before being released on an OTT platform without any fanfare. The irony is brutal. Even before the first frame rolls, the film’s own painful journey to our screens is a mirror to the very silence it is trying to break. Trehan’s 1995-set film a somber and unsettling alternative to popular Indian cinema obsessed with hyper-masculine, uniformed heroes who shoot first and ask questions later (and sometimes never do). It gives up chest-thumping folklore for documented history and dives into a bleeding chapter of Punjab’s past that mainstream conversation has spent decades trying to forget. Satluj does not try to exploit the tragedy to create a cheap spectacle, but rather concentrates on the lives lost without explanation and the one man who refused to let them be statistics.

In the deadline-driven world of film review writing, I find time hanging, every Friday afternoon, like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over my head. I write most of what I absorb; in hindsight, I feel I have invariably left out some observations. But that holds true for almost everything in life. With Satluj, there was so much to take in, feel, assimilate and ponder, that I allowed the film to stay and grow within me for a day before I put my emotions into words. But Satluj wasn’t allowed to breathe for more than 48 hours. Dropped silently on Friday evening, it was pulled off Zee 5, without a doubt the most courageous streaming platform out there, within Sunday night. The platform — whose triptych of bold storytelling (Berlin, Kennedy) was crowned by Satluj — put out a statement saying that the film would be “unavailable in India until further notice” owing to “current developments”. It also vowed to bring back Satluj, as well as continue its endeavour to promote creators with artistic integrity and conviction. We hope the platform will come through with its promise and purpose every time.

Honey Trehan’s Satluj (previously titled Panjab 95) was supposed to have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival 2023. It’s been locked into a battle with the Censor board. The film got a brief release on Zee5 (which doesn’t require a CBFC certificate) on July 3. Two days later, on July 5, the film was pulled down. Zee5 announced this on multiple platforms through a statement. Trehan has said he has full faith in the platform, and he’s praying the film will be back soon. Late into the film, a ghost enters a room. It speaks to a man, a state witness who turned hostile in the scene before. The ghost recounts the harrowing circumstances of its death. The eeriness of the scene reminded me of a film by Gurvinder/Anup Singh. A grounded police procedural about a missing human rights activist till then, Trehan’s film boldly cuts across into surreal territory. And yet, it’s his emotional honesty that ensures the wild swerve doesn’t feel jarring.

Inspired by true events, Satluj chronicles the courageous and harrowing journey of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, who exposed Punjab Police’s role in thousands of alleged extrajudicial killings and illegal cremations during the insurgency. Despite repeated threats from those in power, Jaswant Singh Khalra refused to be silenced. He did not buckle under pressure, choosing to pursue the truth, fully aware of the consequences that awaited him. Before his abduction and subsequent murder in 1995, he alleged that Punjab Police was responsible for at least 25,000 illegal killings and secret cremations. Punjab carries the scars of a deeply troubled past. The 1980s and 1990s were among the state’s darkest years. As the government sought to crush insurgency and separatist violence, security forces were granted sweeping powers with little accountability. Under officials such as Director General of Police KPS Gill, counter-insurgency policies, coupled with a state-sponsored bounty system, allegedly enabled extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and extortion.

A quiet hymn sung for the thousands of names in Punjab that the state machinery tried to wipe during the insurgency, director Honey Trehan tells the story of a god-fearing, resilient man who looked at a landscape of fear and chose not to look away. Armed with the fragile pages of municipal logs and the calculated weights of cremation firewood, he resurrects the disappeared, meticulously piecing together a forensic paper trail that strips away the senior police leadership’s complicity. For the uninitiated, Satluj (originally titled Panjab 95) chronicles the true-life crusade of social activist Jaswant Singh Khalra (Diljit Dosanjh), who risked his life to uncover thousands of secrets behind the state-sanctioned extrajudicial cremations in the 1990s when Punjab was on the boil.

Satluj opens with a chilling sequence which sets the tone of the film. It is pitch dark, a jeep full of joshing cops stops, pulls out a few men, their hands tied behind their backs, and shoots them dead. The casual cruelty that colours this shocking scene gives us, in a snapshot, the darkness that had engulfed Punjab in ’95, rolling over from the decades-long battle the state had waged against insurgency. Men, women, even children weren’t spared in this clean-up operation, which became a battle against ordinary citizens, who were rounded up and killed, their gutted bodies dumped in the river to be picked clean by hungry fish. It’s in this atmosphere of dread that Jaswant Singh Khalra (Diljit Dosanjh) steps in, and steps up, first as just a concerned individual asking about a disappearance, going to the local thana for help, receiving nothing but threats, and warnings to stay away. And then, slowly and steadily becoming the fulcrum of the fight against the massive human rights violations happening under the iron-fist of the Punjab police.

It began, absurdly enough, with a man washing his car. Jaswant Singh Khalra, a prominent human rights activist, was abducted on September 6, 1995 from outside his home in Amritsar and was never seen or heard from again. Despite eyewitnesses and mounting public pressure, almost a year passed without a breakthrough. What exactly happened to Khalra? Did he become a ghost and vanish into the frosty Punjab night? Did he find employment as a wage worker in Europe or America, as the cops tend to insist? Or did he join the thousands of young men—deemed ‘disappeared’ and murdered in extrajudicial killings—whose cause Khalra had made his life’s mission?