New Delhi: Fifty film journalists and film critics have written to minister of information and broadcasting, Ashwini Vaishnaw, expressing alarm at the withdrawal of the film Satluj, earlier popularised as Punjab 95, from the platform where it was being hosted, shortly after its release.“No law in India requires a film releasing directly on OTT platforms to hold CBFC certification,” the signatories say, drawing attention to the extraordinary silencing of the film.The signatories note the continuing erosion of due process for filmmakers navigating India’s certification and streaming regulatory framework and call for transparency from Vaishnaw’s ministry regarding the legal basis for the removal of Satluj.The full text of the letter is as follows:§To,Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw,Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, New DelhiJuly 10, 2026We, the undersigned journalists and film critics, express our alarm at the abrupt removal of director Honey Trehan’s Satluj from ZEE5 in India, less than 48 hours after its release.Satluj — starring Diljit Dosanjh, Kanwaljit Singh, Arjun Rampal, Suvinder Vicky, Geetika Vidya Ohlyan and inspired by the life of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra — began streaming on ZEE5 from the evening of Friday, July 3, 2026. By Sunday evening, July 5, it had been pulled from the platform’s India catalogue, with ZEE5 stating the film would be “unavailable until further notice.”This is not a new story. The film, formerly titled Punjab ’95, was withdrawn from its planned premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, amid reports that political considerations influenced the decision. Around the same time, its producers were contesting an initial Central Board for Film Certification (CBFC) order of 21 cuts in the Bombay High Court. Over the following years, as the film was sent to the CBFC’s revising committee and resubmitted through multiple rounds, the number of cuts rose first to 85, then finally to 127. These demands came from a body whose statutory mandate under the Cinematograph Act, 1952, is to certify films for exhibition, not to censor them.No law in India requires a film releasing directly on OTT platforms to hold CBFC certification. The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MI&B) confirmed this in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on December 17, 2025, stating that OTT content falls outside the CBFC’s jurisdiction and is instead governed by the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. The film’s uncut release on ZEE5 was possible because it didn’t need CBFC approval in the first place. That this film could still be taken down through a separate government mechanism is a form of Executive overreach. That this can happen 18 months after the film’s international release was halted points to a sustained effort to keep Satluj from reaching audiences.This entire fight has also unfolded after the Union government scrapped the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) in 2021, folding its appellate functions into the already overburdened High Courts. What was once a dedicated avenue of appeal for filmmakers no longer exists.Filmmakers are pushed instead into lengthy and expensive High Court litigation, exactly the “endless cycle” Trehan has described, of demands to “cut this, delete that, alter this section,” without accompanying legal reasoning. On top of this, the CBFC and the MI&B have rarely responded to journalistic inquiries (including about Punjab ’95/Satluj). Such opacity doesn’t do much to inspire confidence among good-faith stakeholders.We register our concern at the continuing erosion of due process for filmmakers navigating India’s certification and streaming regulatory framework and call for transparency from the MI&B regarding the legal basis for this removal.We also firmly urge that the findings of the Inter-Departmental Committee constituted to review the film be made public.We stand in solidarity with Honey Trehan, the cast, crew, and producers of Satluj.Signed,Aabha Muralidharan, Aditya Shrikrishna, Ajay Brahmatmaj, Akhil Arora, Aritry Das, Arun A.K., Arunima Joshua, Arshia Dhar, Asad Ali, Ashok Hegde, Avinash Ramachandran, Bedatri Datta Choudhury, B.H Harsh, Debanjan Dhar, Gopinath Rajendran, Ishita Sengupta, Jairaj Singh, Kaashif Hajee, Kartik Bhardwaj, Kirubhakar Purushothaman, Manik Sharma, Mohar Basu, Meenakshi Shedde, Namrata Joshi, Nawaid Anjum, Nayantara Mazumder, Poulomi Das, Pragya Mishra, Prathap Nair, Prathyush Parasuraman, Priyanka Roy, Priyanka Sharma, Rahul Desai, Rohan Naahar, Saachi D’Souza, Sahir Avik D’souza, Sangeetha Devi, Shilajit Mitra, Shreevatsa Nevatia, Shruti Sonal, Siddhant Adlakha, Siddhant Vashistha, Srikanth Srinivasan, S.R. Praveen, Suparna Sharma, Tanul Thakur, Tatsam Mukherjee, Virat Nehru, Vishal Menon, Zico Ghosh.