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The Film ‘Satluj’ Revisits a Turbulent Chapter in India’s Counterinsurgency History

A biopic on human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra puts the spotlight on thousands of enforced disappearances and secret cremations carried out by the Punjab Police.

The innocuously titled film “Satluj,” named after a tributary of the River Indus that flows through the Indian state of Punjab before crossing into Pakistan, was quietly released on the OTT video streaming platform Zee5 without much fanfare on July 3. Within two days, it was suddenly pulled by the channel due to a government diktat citing “national security concerns.”

Originally titled “Punjab 95,” the film is set against the backdrop of the Sikh separatist insurgency in Punjab during the 1980s and 1990s, when the movement for an independent Khalistan was at its peak, and when the Congress party was in power.

The scale of violence that Punjab witnessed during those years, both by the separatists as well as by the state, which used all its power to crush the movement, has left deep scars in the Punjabi psyche and population.

“Satluj” is based on the life of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, who fearlessly exposed police atrocities – thousands of enforced disappearances, secret cremations, and extrajudicial killings – during that period. The film is being hailed as one of the “most powerful films made in India” in recent times.

Directed by Honey Trehan and starring the famous Punjabi actor and singer Diljit Dosanjh, the film had been battling India’s Censor Board for three years to get a theatrical release. Censors demanded 127 cuts in the film. They wanted the names of the film’s protagonists and even places to be changed so that none could be identified as the setting of real events. The director and his team refused to cave in under pressure.

India’s Censor Board is supposed to be an objective body. But it has been increasingly accused of taking decisions based on the political interests of the government in power and stifling free speech and creative expression.

Ultimately, the makers of the film opted to release the uncut version of the film on OTT, where Censor Board clearance is not required. They also changed the name of the film from “Punjab 95” to “Satluj” to avoid controversy. Despite no publicity or marketing, Satluj received rave reviews from the OTT audience. The popularity can be gauged from the fact that it garnered 6.58 million views on the Zee5 platform in India alone within the 48 hours it was online.

The 163-minute-long biopic shows how Khalra, a bank employee in Amritsar, started investigating the disappearance of his friend and stumbled upon thousands of similar cases of forced disappearances of young men. He goes public with his investigation and allegations that the police, at the height of the insurgency, had secretly cremated 25,000 people without informing their families. He even garnered international attention to these extrajudicial killings and met Canadian parliamentarians. Expectedly, Khalra faced the full brunt of the state machinery’s attempts to silence him.

In the 1990s, the Punjab Police, which was at the forefront of the counter-terrorism operations, was led by “supercop” KPS Gill, who had unbridled power to crush the insurgency. His brutal tactics institutionalized custodial torture and killings. Gill is credited with wiping out the insurgency in Punjab, but his methods were illegal and controversial.

Ajit Singh Sandhu, who is alleged to have been behind the abduction, torture, and murder of Khalra in 1995, reported to Gill. Incidentally, Sandhu later committed suicide. Four policemen were later found........

© The Diplomat