Satluj Review: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Satluj brings the story of Jaswant Singh Khalra to life with Diljit Dosanjh in top form. Honest storytelling and powerful performances make this an unforgettable watch. Diljit Dosanjh leads this emotionally charged drama with remarkable restraint in one of the year’s most important films. Honey Trehan’s long-delayed drama is a moving and fearless film that shines a light on one of Punjab’s darkest chapters.
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Director: Honey Trehan
Platform: ZEE5
Release: July 4, 2026
Cast: Diljit Dosanjh, Arjun Rampal, Suvinder Vicky, Geetika Vidya Ohlyan, Kanwaljit Singh
Language: Hindi/Punjabi
Some films have to fight to reach you. Satluj is one of them. Previously titled Punjab ’95, Honey Trehan’s film sat in censorship limbo for nearly four years after the CBFC demanded as many as 127 cuts before it could be released in theatres.
Rather than accepting those cuts and delivering a hollowed-out version of the story, the filmmakers held on. The result — dropped on ZEE5 on July 4, 2026, completely uncut — is one of the most important and emotionally devastating Indian films in recent memory.
The story is based on the real disappearance of Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist who was abducted in 1995 while investigating extrajudicial killings by the Punjab police during the aftermath of the insurgency.
Khalra had uncovered evidence that approximately 25,000 people had been killed and secretly cremated, with their deaths recorded as unclaimed bodies to hide the scale of the atrocities. His investigation put him in the crosshairs of the very system he was exposing. His body was never found.
Diljit Dosanjh plays Jaswant, and it may be the finest performance of his career. His Jaswant is not a firebrand activist in the cinematic mould. He is a bank employee — careful, methodical, a husband and father who notices a discrepancy in cremation records because those happen to be the kinds of details a banker pays attention to.
The transformation from ordinary man to person who cannot look away from what he has seen is handled with extraordinary restraint. Diljit never reaches for a dramatic moment when a quieter one will do more damage. His technique is simple and devastating — he puts everything honest in himself on screen and trusts the audience to feel what he feels. It works completely.
The supporting cast is exceptional across the board. Suvinder Vicky as SSP Sugga is chilling — a man who has weaponised procedural authority into pure menace. He embodies the banality of institutional evil more effectively than the role requires him to.
Geetika Vidya Ohlyan as Jaswant’s wife Paramjit brings a quiet strength to a role that could easily have been reduced to a worried spouse, and she refuses every opportunity to be passive. Kanwaljit Singh as the venal Bitta and Arjun Rampal as the CBI officer brought in after Jaswant disappears both deliver precisely what the film needs from them.
Honey Trehan directs with a composure that mirrors his subject’s. The film never becomes shrill or self-righteous. It presents its horrors with a measured, almost journalistic clarity that makes them land harder than any manipulation could. K.U. Mohanan’s cinematography captures Punjab in darkness and light with equal beauty — the night scenes of police vehicles moving through unlit fields carry a dread that lingers long after the scene has ended.
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The film is 163 minutes long, and not every minute is strictly necessary. The latter portions occasionally allow certain threads to breathe longer than the story requires.
But here is the thing about Satluj — it asks you to sit with discomfort, and that discomfort is part of what it is saying. This is a film about what happens when ordinary citizens are asked to simply accept the unacceptable. It ends with Jaswant’s own words: “I challenge the darkness.” Those words feel small and enormous at the same time.
Watch it. It deserves the audience that censorship tried to deny it.
Satluj is now streaming on ZEE5.