Honey Trehan’s Satluj (Punjab ’95 with a different name, but with everything else intact) finally emerged from censorship hell without losing a drop of her inner fire. This is no small triumph. This is the reason why you can’t miss the film, which released on Zee5 after a four-year battle for CBFC clearance.
But this, of course, is only for many reasons. Satluj it’s a powerful political film that pulls no punches. He remains steadfastly focused on what happens when the state and its police trample on the very laws and individual rights they are charged with protecting. The result is a disturbing film that does enormous damage.
Yes, Satluj It’s not easy to watch, but it’s the kind of film that, despite its length, doesn’t allow you to look away. It requires absolute attention and a willingness to bear the burden of your arguments.
The film dives into the heart of the darkness that engulfed militant-ravaged Punjab in the 1980s and 1990s, doesn’t shy away from anything, and creates an unflinching portrait of political oppression and police abuses that feels real, relevant and resonant to this day.
Although set in a specific part of India and set at a specific point in history, Satluj It is a sweeping and disturbing chronicle of terror and unrest, unleashed in an atmosphere where lawlessness is allowed to run amok because it serves the interests of those who hold the reins of power.
The film begins with the obligatory disclaimer stating that it is not a documentary and that its account of events is only a dramatized version of the story of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, who paid a heavy price for persistently asking questions about disappearances, extrajudicial detentions and mass cremations in Punjab in the mid-1990s.
But Satluj, produced by RSVP and Macguffin Pictures and written by Honey Trehan, Niren Bhatt and Utsav Maitra, deviates from reality only to the extent that the names of some key figures of the era are changed.
Among others, recognizable figures include Director General of Police IPS Bitta (played by Kanwaljeet Singh) or Chief Minister Anant Singh (who died in a suicide bombing a week before Jaswant Singh was abducted from his home in Amritsar, never to be seen again).
Jaswant Singh Khalra, a bank employee, discovers the dark truth that the Punjab police are trying to hide when a close friend and his mother go missing. Jaswant goes in search of them. At the police station, a self-centered cop (Vansh Bhardwaj), hell-bent on getting the rank of inspector and getting married, refuses to register a complaint.
Jaswant heads to the mortuary hoping to find some clues. What the doctor on duty (Geeta Agrawal Sharma) tells him drives him crazy. An even greater shock awaits him at the crematorium, where he stumbles upon a list of hundreds of unclaimed bodies.
The story becomes more sordid as Jaswant digs deeper despite threats and warnings. A local MLA scolds him for making his mission global. Jaswant remains unfazed. His wife Paramjeet (Geeta Vidya Olyan) supports him despite the dangers the mission exposes him and his family (the couple have two school-aged children).
Jaswant has a childhood friend at the local police station – constable Satnam Singh (Saurabh Sachdeva). The latter sticks his neck out and helps Jaswant with all the information he knows as a man who leads his superiors.
Satnam faces the music for his courage. The black truth written on black paper cannot be seen or read. (“Dark truths written on black paper that can neither be seen nor read”), he says, goading Jaswant, putting himself at grave risk.
A confusing scene at Satnam’s house about an hour into the scene. Satluj this is one of the highlights of the film. This gives both Suvinder Vicky, who plays SSP Surjeet Singh Suggu, a formidable and unscrupulous cop who succeeds in spreading terror in the name of fighting militants in the state, and Saurabh Sachdeva (who looks horrified and sad-eyed) an entire segment to showcase his acting skills.
One man, intoxicated with power and arrogance, holds an entire family to ransom. The other, guilt-ridden and much lower in the hierarchy and therefore powerless, trembles. The dynamics of power and its uses play out with heartbreaking starkness in this superbly written sequence, with cinematographer K. U. Mohanan and editor A. Sreekar Prasad at the top of their game, as they are throughout the rest of the film.
Satluj primarily concerns a battle of attrition between police and terrorists, in which police officers become the worst perpetrators of violence and flout the law with absolute impunity. This is a cautionary tale about democratic backsliding, about the dangers that can lead to gross abuses of power becoming the norm.
Additional Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation Samudra Singh (Arjun Rampal, who plays a character who is also the film’s narrator) comes to Punjab from Delhi to investigate Jaswant’s disappearance. Earlier, a lawyer (Varun Badola) took up Jaswant’s case and filed a case in court on behalf of the families of the wrongfully exterminated men and women.
Parts Satluj may seem a little over the top, but given the urgency of its subject matter and the poignancy of its unflinching narrative, it’s a consistently engrossing film that’s both sobering and unsettling.
This is supported by many amazing performances. Diljit Dosanjh leads the way, conveying outrage, determination and a sense of foreboding without going overboard.
The lead actor clearly understands the seriousness of the role and the purpose of the film. He completely immerses himself in the character and the environment in which he lives, deliberately diverting unnecessary attention to the personality of the star.
This has already been said once in this review, but it bears repeating: Satluj can’t be missed. Its name may have changed, but its power has not diminished one iota.
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