Here are the reasons why Diljit Dosanjh’s film Panjab 95 won’t be released?

The much-awaited film of Diljit Dosanjh Panjab 95 won’t be released after the actor confirmed the same on his Instagram story on 20th January at midnight. The trailer was shared by the actor and singer Diljit of the film in January 2025. It was announced that the movie will be released internationally on February 7 without any cuts. It was assumed that in India the movie would be released with cuts. On 17th January 2025, Diljit shared that the movie will be released to an international audience on February 7th due to trouble with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).

Just a few weeks before the scheduled release, the trailer was shared by Diljit which has gained more than 300,000 views in merely 20 hours. However, the trailer was removed from YouTube in India.

What is the movie about?

Panjab 95 is about Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist from Punjab, who was the director of a bank in Amritsar. Khalra fought against the fake encounters of sikh youth in Punjab by state police after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. The police were instructed to detain the suspects for being associated with terrorism. The unarmed suspects were killed and Khalra investigated the mass cremation of hundreds and thousands of unidentified bodies between 1984 and 1994.

Khalra disappeared all of a sudden in 1995. Four police officers were arrested for Khalra’s murder in 2005. The Punjab and Haryana High Court changed the initial 7-year sentence to life imprisonment.
His story has been a controversial part of the sensitive history of the state connected with militancy. The film aimed to highlight the honest account of Khalra’s life.

Censorship battle

The primary reason why movies are not released worldwide is the censorship battle with CBFC. The board asked for around 120 cuts in the film. The film highlighted sensitive subject matter about the violent killing of Sikh youth by the Punjab police in the 1990s.

However, the film was titled Ghalughara in 2022, which was objected to by CBFC. Later the name changed to Punjab 95 after the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) intervened and the board relented with the cuts. The same here, the trailer was launched on YouTube but was removed after a day.

After the proposal of 120 cuts from the film by the censor board, Paramjit Kaur Khalra, wife of Jaswant Singh Khalra, stated that the biopic had been made after getting consent from the family and must be released without any cuts. She also added that the script was read by her family around 4 years ago and permission was granted for the same to director Honey Trehan to make the film with lead artist Dosanjh. According to his wife, the movie was watched in 2022 and they are satisfied with the depiction of the struggle made by Khalra for human rights during the 1990s. She urged that the movie should be released without any cuts to honor the accurate sacrifice made by her husband.

Removal from TIFF

The film was supposed to get a world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2023 but was removed from the lineup just a day before the date of the premiere. The sources mentioned that the political forces have pulled the film premiere from the Toronto Film Festival because Canada holds the second-largest Sikh population after India.

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