Satluj Review: Brave Political Drama

Satluj is a chilling reminder of what happens when a state is allowed to become judge, jury and executioner, asserts Sreeju Sudhakaran.

At the time of writing this review, Satluj has been taken down from Z5 in India.

That came as no surprise to me. What’s surprising is that it took more than a day for the authorities to spring into action. Maybe the new name confused them.

Or maybe they didn’t expect the platform that so enthusiastically promoted The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story to stream a film they had vehemently opposed releasing unless it came with over a hundred cuts. Yes, it was released in its uncensored form.

That says a lot about the times we live in, especially when another politically-charged film was allowed not only an easy theatrical release but also to stream it ‘raw and undekha‘. I don’t need to spell out which one, and why.

So what is it about Honey Trehan’s Punjab 95, now rechristened as Satluj, that bothers the present regime so much that it doesn’t want the general audience to see it uncut?

The Curious Case of Satluj‘s Censorship Woes

On the face of it, the answer as to why Satluj is getting suppressed may seem perplexing. The present ruling party may have had nothing to do with the disappearance and murder of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, which happened when Punjab was governed by the Congress party.

Yet, dig a little deeper and connect the events to the present day, and you begin to understand why they would rather bury this film.

In depicting the atrocities committed by the Punjab police during the turbulent years of the 1980s and 1990s, when countless people were killed merely on suspicion of being terrorists, Satluj becomes a stark reminder of what happens when the police are allowed to become judge, jury and executioner.

It is easy for any viewer to watch the film and draw parallels elsewhere, in different places and different times, and begin questioning official narratives, questioning intrusive police action and ‘encounters’, why activists languish in jail for years without a trial. And does anyone in power like being questioned, no matter which party?

Satluj opens with a chilling sequence. In the night, a group of policemen stand in the fields beside a few people they have apprehended. They joke, tease one another and casually discuss life.

One officer complains that his girlfriend refuses to marry him until he is promoted to inspector. Before you can process the conversation, the cops execute the detainees in cold blood. Then they kill two more people because the lovelorn cop needs two additional bodies to complete his tally for promotion.

The corpses are dumped into the river.

Even if it feels like a makeshift title adopted to bypass the authorities, Satluj gains an unsettling significance through that scene, as Marc Marder’s haunting score grows increasingly ominous.

Jaswant Singh Khalra’s Crusade

We then meet Jaswant Singh Khalra (Diljit Dosanjh), a kind-hearted bank manager. His compassion is established early when he approves yet another loan for an elderly couple who have already mortgaged their property twice. Their only son has disappeared.

Soon, Jaswant finds himself investigating another disappearance, one that will define his legacy and eventually lead to his own tragic end. While trying to trace the missing mother of his slain best friend, Jaswant discovers that she is among the thousands of bodies the Punjab police cremated after labelling them unclaimed.

And this is only one village.

As he digs deeper, he realises many more villages have reported similarly alarming figures, people allegedly killed by the police under the guise of suspected terrorism. That is apart from the countless unnamed bodies dumped into rivers.

Unable to stay silent after uncovering these grisly truths, Jaswant becomes a human rights activist and takes on both the state and the police administration in court. His efforts eventually draw international attention.

In one scene, a local politician asks why he felt the need to air the country’s dirty laundry before outsiders instead of resolving the matter internally. Wonder where I have heard this before.

Despite mounting threats and pressure, Jaswant refuses to back down as he continues fighting for the families of the dead, earning the wrath of both the state and the police. Then, one day in September 1995, he is abducted from his home, never to be seen again.

When The State Becomes The Villain

Director Honey Trehan structures Satluj into a familiar three-act narrative (screenplay written by Trehan, Niren Bhatt, Utsav Maitra). The first act follows Jaswant Singh Khalra’s fight for the voiceless. The second centres on the CBI investigation into his disappearance, led by the honest officer Samudra Singh (Arjun Rampal). The bleak and deeply disturbing final act reveals what actually happened to Jaswant after his abduction.

The film takes several cinematic liberties, dramatising incidents and changing the names of certain real-life figures.

For a story like Satluj, this conventional structure works. It creates the necessary emotional momentum while allowing its actors ample room to shine, even though the story naturally belongs to Diljit, who more than justifies that responsibility.

Unlike Diljit’s last major biopic Amar Singh Chamkila, this isn’t merely a chronicle of one man’s life. The film quickly establishes what transformed Jaswant Singh Khalra from an ordinary bank manager and family man into a human rights crusader and, eventually, a martyr.

More importantly, it highlights what happens when the police are allowed to operate without accountability, even when they claim to be serving a just cause.

Honey Trehan never turns the torture and violence into gratuitous spectacle merely to shock the audience. Yes, we witness some of the brutal methods employed by the police during the climax, but those scenes feel necessary to understand what Jaswant endured, and even then, the film exercises restraint.

Some scenes almost resemble moments from a Hindi masala potboiler, such as when several accused policemen arrive at Jaswant’s home to intimidate his wife, Paramjit Kaur (Geetika Vidya Ohlyan). But then reality has often been stranger and scarier than fiction, and that is precisely what makes Satluj so unsettling.

In their own minds, the policemen, particularly SSP Sugga (Suvinder Vicky) believe they are heroes carrying out the government’s mission to eradicate terrorism by instilling fear. Even if it means eradicating their own people.

One of the film’s most horrifying sequences sees Sugga order the massacre of an entire policeman’s family before branding them terrorists, simply because the policeman had been helping Jaswant. Suvinder Vicky is terrifying in the scene and throughout the film delivers a chillingly believable performance.

Kanwaljit Singh, playing his superior DGP Bitta, gives a commandingly haughty performance as the man who gives Sugga a free hand to unleash terror across the state.

Vansh Bhardwaj, Vikas Mohla, Amit Dhawan et al are equally convincing as morally bankrupt policemen. Jagjeet Sandhu is particularly outstanding as the rookie Kuljit Singh, especially during the third act. Saurabh Sachdeva leaves an indelible mark in his brief appearance.

A Call for Accountability

Diljit Dosanjh brings remarkable sincerity to Jaswant Singh Khalra, underplaying the role with quiet precision while filling it with immense pathos. The scene with Kuljit, where he explains through a simple example of a lamp why he refuses to give up his fight, is bound to tug at your heartstrings. Geetika Vidya Ohlyan also delivers a praise-worthy act as the fiercely determined Paramjit, who carries forward her husband’s cause.

Even after the narrative shifts away from Jaswant himself, though never away from his story, Honey Trehan keeps the film equally compelling. And equally responsible for that is Arjun Rampal, who is calmly intense as the CBI officer (also the narrator), a man carrying red marks in his own ledger, and carries the film with grounded gravitas. His powerful exchanges with Suvinder Vicky’s character are among the best moments in the film.

The investigation portions unfold with urgency and steadily builds the same sense of anguish that accompanies Jaswant’s discovery of what the state has done to thousands of innocent civilians.

As the investigators realise they are fighting a system where witnesses are either murdered or forced to turn hostile while the perpetrators stand united, Satluj underlines one painful irony. Whatever justice Jaswant’s case eventually received came only because it attracted widespread public outrage. It was through his sacrifice that thousands of other families finally found some measure of justice.

It is a tragic reflection on a country that proudly calls itself the mother of democracy, yet often treats its own citizens as enemies, only waking up when the pressure becomes impossible to ignore.

Ah well, the silencing of Satluj itself feels like the cruellest twist of fate for the very message the film is trying to convey.