I am so deeply moved that I froze watching satluj. Why would the state ban such an on-point movie? It was not a political movie. It is a movie that talked about the institutional thuggishness of INDIAN POLICE, something that all of us have experienced in one way or the other— that's the point of the movie. Its name was ‘Panjab 95’ not ‘Panjab 26’....It was the truth of past, not present and must not be of future and hence the film, so how will it radicalize now?……only the genius of Mr. Modi can tell.
But the larger and important point is to implement reforms to tame institutional thuggishness of the Police hopefully before you and I are its victims.
Just look around, the free world has already built the infrastructure for these reforms.
But India's problem is structural. The 2006 Prakash Singh v. The Union of India judgment gave seven binding directives to insulate police from political control and separate investigation from law-and-order duty, so the same officer isn't both enforcer and evidence-gatherer. Almost two decades later, not a single state has fully complied with all the directives. Maharashtra even amended its Police Act to explicitly let the CM override the fixed-tenure rule, and legalized the interference. We are stuck with the basic layer, let alone body cameras, mics, cop vehicle tracking, Independent prosecutors for police killings. Khalra's case is cited precisely because it shows what happens in the absence of all this.
So in India the fight is about whether police answer to the law or to the ruling party of the day. And let me tell you, this culture that degrades us is protected by the very state it serves. These politicians will never let go of an ounce of power (to control), so we have to fight for our rights, for the next wave of reforms in India.