New Delhi: Satluj, the Diljit Dosanjh-starrer film based on the life of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, has been removed from the OTT platform Zee5 in India, just two days after it premiered there. Zee5 confirmed the removal in an official statement posted on X, saying the film would stay unavailable in India “until further notice.” The film remains available on Zee5 Global for viewers outside India.The film’s budget was approximately $4.5 million.
In its statement, Zee5 said: “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 platform did not specify what the “current developments” were.
After the film was taken down from Zee5, lead actor Diljit Dosanjh said during an Instagram Live that he was happy the film had reached audiences before its removal.
“I am very happy that the film has reached the people.today Jaswant Singh Khalra is being talked about in every home. Many people had already downloaded it on their phones, and many were planning to watch it with their families on Sunday. I thought it might be deleted on Monday when everything reopened, but it happened on Sunday evening instead. That’s okay. That was expected,” Dosanjh said.
Dosanjh further said that attempts to stop the film had only increased public interest. “The more you try to stop it, the more it is being discussed. Now this film cannot be stopped. It belongs to the people now. It cannot be stopped anymore,” he said.
About the Film
Satluj is directed by Honey Trehan and is based on the life of Jaswant Singh Khalra, a bank employee in Amritsar who began investigating a rise in unclaimed bodies at local morgues and crematoria during Punjab’s insurgency years. His inquiry led him to allege that Punjab Police had secretly cremated 25 thousands of unidentified bodies, many belonging to people who had disappeared in custody.
Who Was Jaswant Singh Khalra? The Story Behind ‘Satluj’
Jaswant Singh Khalra, the man at the center of the film Satluj, was a bank employee in Amritsar who became one of Punjab’s most well known human rights investigators during the state’s insurgency years. Born in 1952, Khalra worked as a manager at a cooperative bank before he began looking into the disappearance of people picked up by police during the militancy period of the 1980s and early 1990s.
Khalra started digging after colleagues and acquaintances went missing following contact with the police. His search led him to municipal cremation ground records in Amritsar, where he found receipts for firewood bought in bulk for cremating bodies listed only as unidentified or unclaimed. Khalra cross checked the wood purchases and cremation numbers against dates and patterns, and matched them with Amritsar Municipal Committee records that listed names, ages and addresses of people cremated by police. He extended the inquiry to three more districts, and the count of suspected illegal cremations climbed into the thousands.
Khalra estimated that around 25,000 bodies had been secretly cremated by Punjab Police across the state between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. He alleged many of them were people who had been picked up, tortured and killed in custody, then disposed of without informing their families. He also raised allegations involving the deaths of police personnel who had refused to take part in the killings. The Central Bureau of Investigation later found that police had unlawfully cremated 2,097 people in Tarn Taran district alone, and the Supreme Court and National Human Rights Commission both treated Khalra’s documentation as credible evidence.
His Disappearance and Death
Khalra took his findings abroad, including a visit to Canada, where he spoke publicly about the killings and disappearances. He returned to Punjab despite warnings that his life was at risk. On September 6, 1995, Khalra was abducted from outside his home in Amritsar. He was held and tortured in custody for weeks before he was killed in late October 1995, and his body was disposed of in a canal near Harike. Six Punjab Police personnel were convicted in 2005 for his abduction and murder, in a case pursued for years by his wife, Paramjit Kaur Khalra.
What the Film Depicts
Satluj follows this arc closely. Diljit Dosanjh plays Khalra as a bank employee who begins investigating a rise in unclaimed bodies at local morgues after a friend and the friend’s mother go missing. A sympathetic police officer helps him as the inquiry widens, while another officer and his subordinates try to intimidate Khalra into dropping the case. Khalra’s wife, played by Geetika Vidya Ohlyan, stays supportive through threats and surveillance directed at the family. After Khalra disappears in the film, public pressure led by his wife forces a Central Bureau of Investigation probe. Several characters are drawn from real figures in the case, including a state chief minister modeled on former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh and a police chief modeled on former Punjab police chief K.P.S. Gill.
The film runs close to three hours and was shot to reflect the period setting of Punjab in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It also stars Arjun Rampal, Kanwaljit Singh and Suvinder Vicky. Dosanjh has said he took on the role without charging a fee, citing the personal weight the story carried for him.
CBFC Did Not Certify the Film for Four Years
According to director Honey Trehan, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) sought 127 cuts before clearing the film and held clearance for years. He said that even after multiple rounds of revisions, the board continued to raise new objections. Among the requested changes were renaming the film, replacing the real-life character’s name with a fictional one, and removing references to Punjab, the Indian flag, and historical events, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The CBFC has not publicly commented on the matter.
Expressing frustration over the process, Trehan told “I’m waiting for the day when they will give us the script and say, ‘Here’s the script, why don’t you direct.’”
From Legal Battle to OTT Release
After the dispute dragged on, the makers took the CBFC’s demands to the Bombay High Court. The case added more delay, and the film also had to pull out of a planned 2023 premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival while the certification issue was still unresolved. With no end in sight, producers RSVP Movies and MacGuffin Pictures decided to skip CBFC certification altogether and release the film directly on Zee5 on July 3, calling it the original, uncut version. Because the film never went through CBFC certification, some reports say its later removal was linked to a government order under India’s Information Technology Rules, 2021, and not to any CBFC action.
Khalra’s Family’s Version
Paramjit Kaur Khalra, the widow of Jaswant Singh Khalra, welcomed the film’s OTT release in a statement posted on social media, saying she felt relief that the film based on her husband’s life, struggle and legal battle had finally reached audiences after years of political and legal obstacles.
She confirmed that the Khalra family had approved the version released on Zee5, saying it was the same cut first screened for the family, and that its original spirit and truth had remained intact despite sustained pressure to change it.
She thanked Trehan for standing by his principles and refusing to compromise the film’s artistic and historical integrity, saying he had authentically portrayed both the case of the more than 25,000 unclaimed bodies and her husband’s legal fight for truth.
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