Union Minister of State for Railways Ravneet Singh Bittu on Friday dismissed the accusations of the Opposition that the “Satluj” movie was taken off an OTT platform on the orders of the BJP government at the Centre.

He said the OTT platforms do not need any permission to stream or remove the films and it was wrong to blame the government in this regard.

At the same time, Bittu said, the film presented a grossly one-sided story of the Punjab tragedy. He pointed out that 35,000 innocent Punjabis lost their lives to terrorism and they were both Hindus and Sikhs.

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“Does ‘Satluj’ say anything about those killings?” he said.

The minister said he was gathering the data of the victims and had so far got the details of several people from Ludhiana district alone who were killed during terrorism years. “So far, I have got details of over 25 Sikh families alone whose members were killed by terrorists,” said the minister, adding that he would reach out to the families of the victims. “Why be silent on those killings?,” he asked, while warning that the movie was being misused to create a false narrative.

Bittu said when the film was released, its lead actor Diljit Dosanjh had said he knew that the film would be taken off. “How did he know the film would run for one day or two days or that people would record it? This means all these people were hand in glove and their sole aim was to make money from the film, while playing with people’s sentiments,” he claimed.

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