With each passing day, a new development around Satluj creates headlines. The biopic of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, starring Diljit Dosanjh, Kanwaljit Singh, Arjun Rampal, Savinderpal Vicky, among others, was among the highest rated Indian films on IMDb- until the ratings disappeared.
When this author checked the rating aggregator website on Wednesday afternoon, there were IMDb ratings available for other recent releases such as Alia Bhatt‘s Alpha, Akshay Kumar’s Welcome To The Jungle, but the 9.5 rating for Satluj (previously titled Panjab’95) was missing.
The film has been at the center of a massive controversy ever since it was dropped last week on Zee5- before being pulled down within two days. Before this, the Honey Trehan-directorial had been stuck, with the Censor Board asking for 127 cuts originally. Honey and Trehan both refused their name to be associated with the film if even one cut had taken place.
Filmmaker Sanjay Gupta has also noticed the IMDb rating removal. He took to X on Wednesday. Check it out here:
When HT City reaches out to Satluj’s writer Niren Bhatt, he has no idea how this happened, “Film kab aane wali thi, kab chali gayi humein pata nahi chala. Ab yeh IMDb rating ka… kisko problem tha, kya problem tha, koi communication hi nahi tha.”
Satluj’s piracy on the rise
Diljit Dosanjh, Satluj’s lead actor had conducted an Instagram live session post the removal of the film from Zee5 on Sunday. He encouraged people to circulate links of the films if they downloaded it, and that now it was not possible to stop the film. Zee5 later shared a statement on social media, requesting viewers to wait till they bring back the film on the platform, and abstain from consuming pirated copies of Satluj.
