After nearly three years of controversies, title changes, and a certification battle that seemed like it would never end, Diljit Dosanjh’s Satluj is finally out, quietly dropping on Zee5 on Friday.
The film, now on its third title, was originally called Ghalugharathen renamed Panjab ’95and is now simply Satluj.
Directed by Honey Trehan and produced by Ronnie Screwvala, it stars Diljit alongside Arjun Rampal, Surinder Vicky, Varun Badola and Geetika Vidya Ohlan.
Zee5 marked the release with a simple caption: “Some stories refuse to stay buried. Watch ‘Satluj’ streaming now only on Zee5.”
The road to release has been anything but smooth. When the film was first submitted to the Central Board of Film Certification, the CBFC demanded 120 cuts and objected to the title.
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee stepped in, and eventually the CBFC backed down on the cuts, but still insisted on a title change.
A trailer went up on YouTube around that time too, only to be pulled down within a day.
Then came the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, where the film was set for its world premiere, until it was abruptly removed from the lineup just a day before.
A source told Variety that ‘political forces’ were at play, given Canada’s large Sikh population. TIFF never officially confirmed or denied anything.
The film was originally supposed to release globally in February last year. That didn’t happen either.
At its core, Satluj tells the story of Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist who investigated the mass cremation of thousands of unidentified bodies in Punjab between 1984 and 1994, victims of alleged fake encounters by Punjab Police during the militancy years.
Khalra disappeared in 1995, and a decade later, four police officers were arrested for his alleged abduction and murder. In 2007, the Punjab and Haryana High Court extended their sentences to life imprisonment.
It’s a story that clearly made a lot of people uncomfortable, which is probably exactly why it took this long to reach audiences.
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