Jaswant Singh Khalra biopic: Makers move Bombay High Court for censor clearance

Mumbai: The biopic based on the life of prominent human rights activist, Jaswant Singh Khalra, is getting delayed due to censor certificate clearance. The makers of the film moved the Bombay High Court seeking legal intervention.

The film, directed by Honey Trehan and directed by actor-singer Diljit Dosanjh, does not have a title yet, but the makers of the film have sought legal help from the court.

After Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, the police were empowered to detain anyone as a suspected terrorist. Police were accused of killing unarmed suspects in fake shootouts and burning thousands of bodies to cover up the killings.

Jaswant Singh Khalra was the director of a bank in Amritsar during the period of terrorism in Punjab. They found evidence of the abduction, dismemberment and cremation of thousands of unidentified bodies by the police. He also reportedly executed 2,000 of his own officers who refused to cooperate with these extrajudicial tasks.

It was Khalra’s investigation that sparked worldwide protests and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) concluded that the Punjab Police had illegally cremated 2,097 people in Punjab’s Tarn Taran district alone. The Supreme Court of India and the National Human Rights Commission certified the validity of their data.

Khalra went missing on September 6, 1995 and a case of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy was registered on the complaint of his wife Paramjit Kaur.

Taking strong note of the “heinous crime” committed by four police officers in “eliminating” human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, who had been active in bringing to light extrajudicial killings in Tarn Taran and Amritsar districts, the Punjab and Haryana Court on 16 October 2007 acquitted the four The sentence of accused former head constable Prithvipal Singh and former sub-inspectors Satnam Singh, Surinder Pal Singh and Jasbir Singh was commuted from seven years to life imprisonment.

An industry source shared that the producers – RSVP Movies, Abhishek Choubey and Honey Trehan have been waiting for the censor clearance for the past six months.

The source added: “The Jaswant Singh Khalra case is back in court, this time for the censor certificate. It will come up for hearing on July 4 and Amit Naik will lead the Khalra biopic legal team.”

The source said that RSVP had applied for the censor certificate in December 2022 and it was sent to the review committee. The team shared all the necessary paperwork requested and went through the process diligently, but with no resolution from the CBFC, they finally moved the Bombay High Court.”