PIL Seeking Satluj's Restoration Withdrawn; Court Calls It A "Proxy Petition"
Satluj PIL: A PIL seeking restoration of Diljit Dosanjh’s Satluj was withdrawn after the Punjab & Haryana High Court was told it looked like a producers’ proxy petition.
North Desk Correspondent
Chandigarh, July 21
A public interest litigation seeking the restoration of Diljit Dosanjh’s film Satluj on ZEE5 was withdrawn from the Punjab and Haryana High Court last week (order released Tuesday), after the bench was told (by the other side, and not contested) that it “seems to be a proxy petition filed on behalf of the producers” of the film.
Faced with that, the petitioner’s own senior counsel of the Satluj PIL asked to withdraw the plea rather than argue it out, and the court let it go, dismissing it as withdrawn with liberty for “the person(s) aggrieved” to file it properly.
What’s the issue—just for context
Satluj PIL: For anyone coming to this fresh: Satluj is a biographical drama, directed by Honey Trehan and produced by Ronnie Screwvala’s RSVP Movies, built around the life of Jaswant Singh Khalra — a bank manager and human rights activist who, in the early 1990s, used the cremation grounds’ own paperwork to expose that thousands of young men picked up during Punjab’s insurgency years had been secretly killed and cremated as “unidentified” bodies.
He went public with the findings in 1995. Weeks later, he was abducted from outside his Amritsar home by men in police uniform and never seen again. Six Punjab Police officials were eventually tried for his murder; the case took roughly a decade to reach conviction, and North Desk’s Khalra Files series has covered several threads of what happened to those men since.
The film’s journey
Satluj PIL: The film itself had its own three-year fight before it ever reached a screen. Originally titled Ghallughara, then Punjab ’95, it ran into a prolonged tussle with the Central Board of Film Certification — reports at different points put the CBFC’s demanded cuts anywhere from 21 to 127 — before the makers, backed by the SGPC’s intervention, chose to skip a theatrical release altogether and put it out directly on ZEE5, uncut, under its final title, on July 3, 2026. It lasted two days on the platform.
On July 5, it was pulled, with the government reportedly invoking its powers under Section 69A of the IT Act (the same provision used to block online content on grounds of sovereignty, security or public order) on the basis that a film headed for OTT release still needed CBFC certification it hadn’t obtained.
The Centre has since said it’s considering making CBFC certification mandatory for all OTT releases, and examining whether to act against ZEE5 for streaming the film before that certification came through.
That’s the backdrop against which the PIL was filed on July 9 — just three days after the takedown — by one Sharwan Singh, seeking directions that the film be restored for viewing across the country, on the ground that pulling a certified — in his telling — film without any disclosed statutory or judicial order violated citizens’ right to free expression and to receive information.
READ ALSO: ASI Amarjit Singh: From Life Term For Killing KHALRA To Acquittal
…And now to the court: Satluj PIL
Satluj PIL: It didn’t hold up well in court. At an earlier hearing, the bench of Acting Chief Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor had already questioned Sharwan Singh’s standing to bring the case at all, pointing out he was neither the film’s director nor its producer.
The petitioner’s side reportedly responded by saying it would be withdrawn and refiled through the director instead. The Union government and CBFC’s counsel, Senior Advocate Dheeraj Jain, pushed harder still, asking what public cause the petition even served, and noting that neither the petitioner nor the filmmakers had approached any authority or filed a representation before rushing to court within days of the takedown.
By the July 17 hearing (the order now on record) the objection had sharpened from “what’s the public cause” to “this looks like the producers’ own petition wearing someone else’s name.” Petitioner’s senior counsel didn’t push back on that; she simply sought to withdraw, with liberty to have the actual aggrieved party — presumably the filmmakers or ZEE5 — file afresh. The court granted it.
Satluj PIL: What that leaves open: whether the film’s makers, or ZEE5, will now approach the court directly in their own name, rather than through an intermediary — and whether that petition, if it comes, gets treated any differently.
Follow North Desk on WhatsApp for the latest from Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vb7ccdxJENy2H87DBG3E
KHALRA FILES on North DESK:
READ ALSO: The DSP Convicted For Killing Khalra Cannot Be Found At His Address
READ ALSO: Jaswant Singh Khalra Had Named His ‘Killer’ To An Ex-Judge Before Abduction
READ ALSO: Cops Disposed Of Jaswant Singh Khalra’s Body. Then They Had Whisky, Dinner
READ ALSO: The Cop Who Fed Khalra His Last Meals…And Whose Words Convicted His Killers
READ ALSO: Three Of Khalra’s Convicted Killers Are Out On Bail Right Now — Here’s Why
READ ALSO: Jailed in Same Cell Who Saw Everything–The Story of Khalra Witness Kulwant Singh
READ ALSO: Punjab Truth Commission Explained: What It Is, Who Wants It, Why Now
READ ALSO: ASI Amarjit Singh: From Life Term For Killing KHALRA To Acquittal
