Amidst the furore over Satluj being removed from OTT, Gangster: A Love Story (2006), Barfi! (2012) and more recently Metro…In Dino (2025) director Anurag Basu took to social media on Monday to compare filmmaker Honey Trehan, who has helmed the Diljit Dosanjh starrer, to Iranian director Jafar Panahi.
Jafar, known for films like It Was Just an Accident (2025) and No Bears (2022), amongst others, is a filmmaker who has been frequently prosecuted by the Iranian state because of the content of his films.
Anurag took to his X account and wrote, “Satluj. I never thought a day would come when Honey Trehan would face what Jafar Panahi faced in Iran.”
Satluj, which was earlier titled Punjab '95, is a film directed by Honey Trehan and stars Diljit Dosanjh, along with Arjun Rampal and Suvinder Vicky. It is a film based on the life of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra who shed light on Punjab police's extra-judicial killing of about 25,000 people at the time of insurgency in the state.
The film has had a tussle with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for over three years with the latter demanding over 120 cuts in the film. On Friday evening, however, the film quietly landed on ZEE5 and received favourable reviews from both critics and audiences. It was however dropped from the platform by Sunday evening. Making the announcement, ZEE5 wrote in an Instagram post, “In light of the current developments, Satluj will be unavailable in India until further notice. We remain committed to exploring every appropriate avenue through due process to bring the film back to our audiences at the earliest opportunity.”
In 2025, Iran sentenced Palme d'Or-winning filmmaker Jafar Panahi in absentia to one year in prison and a travel ban over "propaganda activities" against the country. The sentence includes a two-year travel ban and prohibition of Jafar from membership in any political or social groups, his lawyer Mostafa Nili had told AFP, adding that they would file an appeal. He won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize last year for It Was Just an Accident, a film in which five ex-inmates contemplate whether to exact revenge on a man they believe to be their former jailer.
In 2010, Jafar was banned from making movies and from leaving the country after supporting mass anti-government protests a year earlier and making a series of films that critiqued the state of modern Iran. Convicted of "propaganda against the system", he was sentenced to six years in jail but served only two months behind bars before being released on bail.