Hamid Mir
This is the story of an ordinary man who left home to search for a missing friend of his but found the stories of thousands of missing people. When these stories exposed the atrocities of state institutions, this ordinary man was declared an accomplice of terrorists and an agent of the enemy. Then, international human rights organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also started to add their voice to the voice of this brave man, but one day he too was disappeared. A cruel police officer tried to hide the stories of thousands of missing people from the world by shooting this brave man, but this extrajudicial killing became the cause of exposing thousands of stories of atrocities. The powerful state tried everything possible to hide this story of atrocities from the world, but this story has now spread all over the world. The Indian government thought that by banning Diljit Dosanjh’s film “Sutlej”, it would hide the stories of the disappearance of more than 25,000 Sikhs in Indian Punjab and their extrajudicial killings from future generations, but the ban has further increased the popularity of this film and now people in every household in India are watching the film on YouTube and Facebook. This film revolves around a common man, Jaswant Singh Khalra, who was an officer in a bank.
He was a resident of Khalra, a village in Tarn Taran district of Indian Punjab. One night, he was sleeping in his house when there was a knock on the door. When he opened the door, there was a panicked mother of a friend of his. The worried mother told him that the Punjab police had taken her son from the house. When Khalra went to the nearest police station to find his friend, the policemen of that police station pretended to be unaware of his friend’s arrest. Then Khalra went to another police officer friend of his for help. His police officer friend convinced Khalra to go back home and stop searching for his friend. A few days later, Khalra’s missing friend’s grieving mother also went missing. Now Khalra’s concern turned into a search. After a lot of running around, he came to know that his friend’s missing mother was roaming around different police stations in search of her missing son. When the police saw that this old woman was not ready to forget her missing son, they shot her too to cover up their cruelty. This was the turning point when Jaswant Singh Khalra came to know that his missing friend had also been killed in a fake police encounter and the policemen who refuse to be part of these fake police encounters are also killed. Then Khalra reached the cremation ground where the pyre of his missing friend had been burnt. The crematorium records contained the names and addresses of thousands of missing Sikhs who were declared unidentified and burned in a fire by the Punjab police.
After finding some more evidence, Jaswant Singh Khalra approached a lawyer to get justice for the families of thousands of missing persons through the courts. He had now become the voice of thousands of missing persons’ families. He was often seen at protests where elderly mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of missing persons were crying out for justice, holding pictures of their missing loved ones. The Indian Punjab Police chief K.P.S. Gill had declared Khalra an anti-national in the media, but Khalra ignored the accusation because he was the grandson of Harnam Singh, a leader who fought against the British government. He was sure that the Indian government was only accusing Harnam Singh’s grandson to silence him but would not actually treat him as an anti-national. A high court in India, while hearing a petition filed by Jaswant Singh Khalra, ordered an inquiry against some police officers involved in the killing of several missing Sikhs. During the court proceedings, it was found that the powers given to the Punjab Police by the Indian government in the name of war on terrorism were being misused and innocent women and children were being killed along with the youth so that they would not take pictures of their missing loved ones and take part in any demonstration. Many missing persons were killed in fake encounters and weapons were kept with them and it was said that they were killed along with terrorists. When criticism of the Punjab Police increased, then one day, on the orders of KPS Gill, a notorious SSP Ajit Singh Sindhu kidnapped Khalra from his house. Jaswant Singh Khalra, who raised his voice for the missing persons, was himself disappeared. Ajit Singh Sindhu tried to make a deal with Khalra in a torture cell that if he withdrew his application in court, he would be released and then he would be able to go to Canada and live the rest of his life in silence. Khalra was facing death but he refused to make the deal, after which Ajit Singh Sandhu shot him in front of several other policemen. Khalra was killed in September 1995 because if he had lived, stories of the extrajudicial killings of more than 25,000 Sikhs in Indian Punjab between 1984 and 1995 would have come to light. When Indian actor Diljit Dosanjh made a film about Khalra, in 2023, Prasoon Joshi, the head of India’s Central Board of Film Certification (Censor Board), raised 127 objections to the film.
The film was called “Punjab 95”. When the Censor Board asked to change the name of the film, the film was renamed “Sutlej” because the bodies of many missing Sikhs were found in the Sutlej River. Despite the name change, the film was not allowed to be released. During this time, the head of the Censor Board changed. The new chief Shashi Shekhar Vempati banned the entire film to save his job. After this ban, Diljit Dosanjh released his film on social media while guerrilla launching it. He took the help of social media and destroyed all the arrogance and pressure of the Indian government. Diljit Dosanjh had realized that his future and that of the Sikh nation did not lie in India, so some time ago he had obtained American citizenship so that Indian citizenship would not become an obstacle in the way of bringing the truth to light. Through this film, he told the whole world that restrictions and censorship of a nuclear power in the name of national security can never hide the truth. After releasing his film on social media, Diljit Dosanjh has told the Indian government, “Lo kar lo ab meri film block” – he may never be able to work in Indian films again, but now he plans to make films in America and Canada so that he can expose more stories of atrocities in India. Diljit Dosanjh’s rebellion marks the beginning of a new era in the world. In the coming time, it will no longer be possible for powerful states to hide stories of oppression through censorship. It has now become difficult to spread lies in the name of national interest.
