A quiet hymn sung for the thousands of names in Punjab that the state machinery tried to wipe during the insurgency, director Honey Trehan tells the story of a god-fearing, resilient man who looked at a landscape of fear and chose not to look away.

Armed with the fragile pages of municipal logs and the calculated weights of cremation firewood, he resurrects the disappeared, meticulously piecing together a forensic paper trail that strips away the senior police leadership’s complicity. For the uninitiated, Satluj (originally titled Panjab 95) chronicles the true-life crusade of social activist Jaswant Singh Khalra (Diljit Dosanjh), who risked his life to uncover thousands of secrets behind the state-sanctioned extrajudicial cremations in the 1990s when Punjab was on the boil.

Coming at a time when human rights are viewed skeptically, and activism is routinely branded a threat to national security, Satluj arrives not just as a period drama, but as a fearless, contemporary warning. Caught in the cobwebs of the Central Board of Film Certification for years, it is the story of a terrifying dark, but more than that, it is the story of a solitary candle that refused to be blown out by the winds of systemic tyranny in a democracy.

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Years after Gulzar looked at the ‘other side’ through the eyes of the rebel in the hideout in Maachis, Trehan views the other side through the eyes of the citizen activist, fighting not for a political ideology but for basic human rights and the preservation of memory.

The lens of K.U. Mohanan’s unflinching camera captures the hypnotic effect of unresolved grief as we watch the humble bank manager transform into a collector of ghosts after his friend Kirpal disappears in thin air and his mother Gurpej loses her mind to the agonising void of waiting. Jaswant knocks at the doors of the system, but meets deafening silence and a not-so-unspoken warning that his ledger of the dead could easily include his own name next.

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SSP Sugga (Suvinder Vicky) emerges as the symbol of state impunity, having turned murder into a mundane routine in the name of national security. Working under the cover of the imposing DGP Bitta (Kanwaljeet Singh), the film uses Vicky’s casual demeanour to show that the system had normalised mass murder into a standard administrative operation to secure promotions and institutional favour.

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Amidst the maelstrom, the unspoken agreement between Jaswant and his wife Paramjeet (Geetika Vidya Ohlyan) serves as the film’s psychological anchor. Her tears stem from a terrifying conflict. She deeply respects his moral righteousness, but is terrified of the price.

Having Kanwaljeet Singh and S.M. Zaheer on screen provides a sense of eerie continuity. For audiences like me who remember the haunting impact of Maachis in theatres, watching Singh and Zaheer in Satluj as symbols of the system all over again acts as a subconscious reminder that this is the same soil, the same conflict, and the same unresolved generational trauma, just viewed from a different vantage point.

Between the lines, the film serves as a timeless warning about how the biggest democracies use the ruse of national security to vilify whistleblowers and cover up systemic atrocities. Without letting his grip slip from the narrative, Trehan exposes this rhetoric of dehumanisation. When Jaswant Singh exposes the paper trail, DGP Bitta, who seems to be based on late KPS Gill, a deeply polarising figure, instantly dismisses his human rights plea as attention-seeking gimmicks fuelled by foreign powers.

By introducing an upright, constitutional investigator in the form of Samudra Singh (Arjun Rampal is efficient), the script avoids painting the entire Indian state machinery with a single, villainous brush. In a moving sequence, Samudra reminds a rogue cop that the state cannot forever use the trauma of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and cross-border militancy to justify the planned murder of thousands of civilians.

Trehan frames the critique of the system not as an anti-state diatribe, but as a defence of the rule of law, as Jaswant proves from the bureaucratic files that the police force had stopped distinguishing between actual militants and ordinary, innocent civilians for promotions and profiteering. Like Gulzar, he shows that citizens are like matchsticks that ignite when pushed too far by systemic cruelty, as he recreates the assassination of CM Beant Singh as the tipping point.

Despite running over 160 minutes, narrative tension doesn’t slacken. The runtime feels earned as the screenplay undergoes mutation from an immersive procedural to a high-stakes thriller with an unexpected layer of dark humour. It ensures that despite gravity, the film never succumbs to tedious pacing.

Diljit delivers a restrained, internalised performance. They might not give him big box-office numbers, but serious, grounded dramatic roles uncover the absolute best of his acting craft. His expressive eyes, soft voice and pauses carry a profound gravity that louder, comedic performances often mask. Vicky proves to be a perfect dark foil to Diljit, who plays Sugga as an arrogant careerist bureaucrat who knows he has the might of the state apparatus behind him.

Satluj is a significant document that deserves your attention not just as an archive for the unmourned but also as a vital mirror held up to the machinery of modern democracies.

Satluj is currently streaming on Zee5.