Hansal Mehta on Shahid not available on OTT: We deserve our ‘files’ in a country that has stopped caring for stories that shine light on minorities

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta on Monday took to X (formerly Twitter) to speak about his 2012 film Shahid, starring Rajkummar Rao, not being available on any OTT platform. Blaming the “studio” for not caring, the Scoop director said that the country had “stopped caring for stories that shine light on our minorities.” In an apparent dig on The Kashmir Files he also wrote, “We deserve our files.”

Responding to a user’s tweet, which mentioned that the film is not available on torrent or any OTT platform and the YouTube version is shorter than the actual runtime, Hansal wrote, “The film is lying with a studio which doesn’t seem to care. In a country which increasingly has begun to stop caring for stories that shine a light on our minorities. We deserve our files.”

For the unversed, Shahid was based on the life of human rights activist and lawyer Shahid Azmi, who was assassinated in 2010. In the film, Rajkummar plays the eponymous character who fights for Muslims falsely charged under POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act).

The film also featured Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Tigmanshu Dhulia and Kay Kay Menon.