Around this time last week, Honey Trehan’s Satluj was trending on Zee5 as the most-viewed film. Consigned to censorship purgatory since 2022, the political drama previously titled Punjab ’95 had quietly been released on the platform on the evening of Friday, July 3.

For 48 hours, a movie that the censor board had repeatedly refused to clear was available (if only to Zee5 subscribers) without any of the 127-odd cuts the authorities had demanded.

By Sunday evening, however, the listing for Satluj had beenreplaced with a blank slate. A film inspired by a human rights activist who had been abducted while trying to pierce the veil of darkness around extra-judicial killings and disappearances had itself disappeared.

Jaswant Singh Khalra was among the activists in Punjab in the 1990s who exposed police death squads accused of killing innocent Punjabis under the garb of curbing Khalistani terrorism.

The activists alleged that this strategy had the support of the police top brass and Punjab’s political rulers, with targets being set and promotions given to the participating policemen.

Eventually, a bunch of junior police officers were indicted for abducting and killing the real-life Khalra.

Satluj stars Diljit Dosanjh as Jaswant Singh, whose investigation leads him to a conspiracy orchestrated by senior police officers.

One of the central themes in Satluj – murkiness – is also obvious...

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