THE VILLAINY GAP

ਕਮਾਂਡੋ ਲੰਘ ਜਾਂਦਾ ਹੈ। ਗਵਾਹ ਨਹੀਂ।

A Constitutional-Forensic Audit of Certification Asymmetry,

Sikh Representation, State-Sensitive Memory,

and the Constitutional Limits of Administrative Censorship

in Dhurandhar and Punjab ’95

kpsgill.com

Forensic Audit Series — March 2026

EVIDENTIARY NOTE

This report is a constitutional-forensic audit. It is not a film review, not a political pamphlet, and not a petition drafted for any specific proceeding. It is a structured analytical document applying evidentiary discipline and constitutional reasoning to a specific pattern of institutional behaviour. Every claim in this document is tagged. Every tag has a fixed meaning. The tag system is not cosmetic; it is the evidentiary architecture on which the entire argument rests.

[PF] designates a Proved Finding: an adjudicated fact, statutory text, official institutional description, or directly reported certification record whose existence is not contingent on this report’s interpretation. [PF] materials are what the record establishes. They are the hardest materials in the document. A reader who wishes to challenge a [PF] must produce contrary adjudicative or institutional record of equal standing.

[DA] designates a Documented Allegation: a publicly reported claim or controversy that exists in the record but has not been finally adjudicated. The controversy is real; its precise content may be contested. The most important [DA] materials in this report are the specific demands reportedly made by the CBFC in relation to Punjab ’95. The director’s public accounts of those demands are [PF] as statements he made. Their precise content and the CBFC’s characterisation of them remain [DA]. That distinction is maintained throughout.

[AI] designates an Analytical Inference: this report’s structural interpretation of the documented pattern, derived from [PF] and [DA] materials but not itself a proved finding. [AI] is where argument lives. The most important [AI] in this document is the Villainy Gap itself: the inference that the certification record reveals a systematic, constitutionally significant asymmetry in how Sikh identity is treated depending on its political function. That inference is supported by [PF] and [DA] but not reducible to them. A reader who disagrees with an [AI] must identify which [PF] or [DA] is misread and offer contrary primary material in its place.

No tag is used lightly. No paragraph drifts. Every substantive proposition either establishes a fact, interprets a fact, connects fact to doctrine, or connects doctrine to remedy.

HOW TO READ THIS REPORT

This document has three registers operating simultaneously, and the reader should hold all three in view.

The first register is evidentiary. The report assembles a body of primary, adjudicated, and documented record concerning the certification of two Sikh-centred films, the historical events underlying one of them, and the institutional architecture of the body responsible for certification. This register is governed by the [PF]/[DA]/[AI] tag system. Readers approaching this document as lawyers, scholars, or researchers should attend primarily to this register when testing the report’s claims.

The second register is constitutional. The report applies India’s existing constitutional jurisprudence on freedom of expression, the limits of administrative censorship, and the requirements of non-arbitrariness and equal treatment to the evidentiary record. This register draws on Article 19(1)(a), Article 19(2), and the Supreme Court’s certification-related jurisprudence in K.A. Abbas v. Union of India (1970), S. Rangarajan v. P. Jagjivan Ram (1989), and Bobby Art International v. Om Pal Singh Hoon (1996). The constitutional analysis does not invent doctrine; it applies existing doctrine to documented institutional behaviour.

The third register is remedial. Part IX of this report translates the evidentiary and constitutional analysis into a set of proposed corrective principles: standards that a constitutional court could adopt, that the Board could operationalise, or that Parliament could codify, in order to prevent the documented asymmetry from operating in future cases. The remedial register is forward-facing. It is the difference between a forensic critique and a constitutional instrument.

Readers should be aware that this report does not claim authorship by any named legal practitioner, retired judge, or institutional body. It is published as a forensic analytical document. Its authority derives exclusively from the quality of its evidence, the rigour of its reasoning, and its openness to adversarial testing. It neither needs nor claims any authority it has not earned from those sources alone.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This is a forensic audit of certification asymmetry in the treatment of Sikh subjects by India’s film-certification regime. It is also, on its constitutional dimension, an argument that the documented pattern of that asymmetry raises cognisable concerns under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India as interpreted and constrained by the Supreme Court’s censorship jurisprudence.

The audit compares two Sikh-centred films. Dhurandhar 2 is a high-visibility nationalist espionage thriller whose Sikh protagonist functions as a state-useful martial figure. It received an ‘A’ certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification in March 2026 after commercially conventional edits to profanity, graphic violence, subtitle corrections, and permissions-related material. [PF] Punjab ’95 (originally titled Ghalughara), a historical film centred on the documented work and murder of human-rights investigator Jaswant Singh Khalra, was first submitted to the CBFC in December 2022 and remained uncleared at the time of this report — a period exceeding two and a half years. [PF] The CBFC reportedly demanded approximately 127 cuts, including removal of references to Punjab, Punjab Police, and historically identifying material tied to the Khalra investigation. [DA]

The evidentiary foundation for the Punjab ’95 side of this comparison is not grievance or advocacy. It is institutional record of the highest available order. The Supreme Court of India, in proceedings initiated by Paramjit Kaur Khalra, described the findings generated by a court-ordered CBI inquiry as disclosing a ‘flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale.’ [PF] The CBI’s December 1996 report recorded at least 2,098 illegal cremations in Amritsar district alone. [PF] Criminal proceedings established that Khalra was abducted and murdered by state agents. [PF] These are adjudicated facts. A film about the investigator who generated that evidence chain does not deal in speculative grievance. It deals in proved history.

The constitutional argument proceeds from the Supreme Court’s own jurisprudence. In S. Rangarajan, the Court held that the standard for public-order restriction of a film must require a proximate and direct nexus between the film and a real threat to civic order. The possibility that some section of the population might react adversely does not satisfy that standard. The Court’s language was unambiguous: the institution of law cannot bow down before the frown of intolerance. [PF] In Bobby Art International, the Court upheld certification of a film dealing with graphic violence and sexual exploitation on the ground that serious subject matter served a legitimate social purpose and did not lose constitutional protection merely because it was disturbing. [PF] In K.A. Abbas, the Court, while upholding the constitutionality of pre-censorship, simultaneously established that the power must be exercised against clear and reviewable criteria. [PF] The reported treatment of Punjab ’95 — identity-erasing demands targeting the name of a murdered investigator, the institution implicated in his murder, and the geographic precision that makes the record verifiable — cannot be squared with these principles. [AI]

The report’s central analytical finding is the Villainy Gap. Sikh identity appears more readily certifiable through India’s certification regime when it serves one of two state-legible functions: the weaponised patriot or the expendable antagonist. Sikh identity becomes markedly harder to certify when it appears as witness, archive, accusation, or adjudicated memory. [AI] This finding is an inference from a documented pattern, not a proved finding about the subjective intent of any individual censor or board member. Its constitutional significance lies not in what it says about motive but in what it says about outcome: a facially neutral statute, administered through a structurally non-independent board, is producing systematically differential outcomes based on the political function of the identity at issue.

The report proposes six corrective principles in Part IX. They are designed to be judicially adoptable, administratively operable, and constitutionally anchored. They do not require the legislature to amend the Cinematograph Act. They require the Board, the courts, and the Central Government to apply the Act in accordance with the constitutional constraints that the Supreme Court has already established.

The conclusion is not that the system hates Sikhs. It is that the system, as presently administered, appears willing to certify the Sikh as commando, tolerate the Sikh as caricature, and resist the Sikh as witness. That differential, measured against the Rangarajan proportionality standard, the Bobby Art purpose principle, and the Abbas reviewability requirement, is a constitutional problem, not merely a political one. [AI]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Evidentiary Note

How to Read This Report

Executive Summary

Formal Findings

Part A — Certification Record  •  Part B — The Khalra Record  •  Part C — Toponymic and Identity Erasure  •  Part D — The Statutory Architecture  •  Part E — The Villainy Gap  •  Part F — Religious Texture and Selective Application  •  Part G — The Transnational Context  •  Part H — Constitutional Grounds

Part I — The Certification Record

Part II — Ledger vs. Rifle

Part III — Khalra and the Judicial and Institutional Record

Part IV — Toponymic and Identity Erasure

Part V — The Statutory Normalisation of the Sikh Antagonist

Part VI — Religious Texture and Selective Concern

Part VII — Governance, Discretion, and the CBFC-Ministry Structure

Part VIII — The Transnational Moment and Evidentiary Restraint

Part IX — Constitutional Implications and Corrective Principles

Conclusion

Appendix A — Evidentiary Timeline

Appendix B — Path of Certification: Analytical Account

Appendix C — Source Hierarchy and Evidentiary Method

Evidentiary Bibliography

FORMAL FINDINGS

The following numbered propositions state the report’s evidentiary conclusions in compressed, citation-grade form. They are intended to be excerptable into written submissions, academic citations, writ petitions, and judicial reasoning. Each carries its evidentiary tag and a cross-reference to the section where full analysis appears. Where a finding is constitutional in character, it identifies the doctrinal ground.

Part A — Certification Record

Finding 1.  Punjab ’95, first submitted to the CBFC in December 2022, remained uncleared as of the date of this report, a period exceeding two and a half years. The CBFC reportedly demanded approximately 127 cuts. Part I. [PF] [DA]

Finding 2.  Dhurandhar 2 received an ‘A’ certificate in March 2026 after edits to profanity, violence, subtitles, and permissions-related material. The process was commercially conventional and completion-oriented. Part I. [PF]

Finding 3.  The structurally distinct variable between the two certification pathways is not technical complexity, commercial scale, or the intensity of depicted violence. It is the political function of Sikh identity in each film: martial instrumentality in Dhurandhar; archival witness in Punjab ’95. Parts I, II. [AI]

Part B — The Khalra Record

Finding 4.  Jaswant Singh Khalra was abducted in September 1995 by state agents after publicly pursuing the cremation investigation. Criminal proceedings established his abduction and murder in police custody. Part III. [PF]

Finding 5.  The CBI’s December 1996 report, as cited by Human Rights Watch and referenced in Supreme Court proceedings, recorded at least 2,098 illegal cremations in Amritsar district alone. The Supreme Court described the findings as a flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale. Part III. [PF]

Finding 6.  These adjudicated facts constitute sufficient evidentiary ground for a film about Khalra’s investigation. Demands that sever the film from its investigator, its implicated institution, and its verified geography are not editorial adjustments. They are evidentiary dissolution. Part III. [AI]

Part C — Toponymic and Identity Erasure

Finding 7.  The reported demand to remove ‘Punjab’ and ‘Punjab Police’ from Punjab ’95 is an attempt to un-name the crime scene. These terms are the evidentiary coordinates connecting the film to an adjudicated record of institutional violence. Their removal dilutes responsibility. Part IV. [AI]

Finding 8.  In 2016, the CBFC sought 89 cuts to Udta Punjab, including the film’s title and Punjab-referencing material. That continuity establishes a recurring pattern of toponymic censorial discomfort with Punjab as a named site of structural harm. Part IV. [PF]

Part D — The Statutory Architecture

Finding 9.  Section 5B(1) permits certification refusal on public-order, state-security, and related grounds. Section 5B(2) authorises the Central Government to issue binding guidelines. The CBFC chair, board, and advisory panels are Central Government appointees. These facts are institutional [PF]. Part VII. [PF]

Finding 10.  The Board is not constitutionally or administratively insulated from state power. The Central Government retains directive authority, appointment authority, and residual revisional leverage under Section 6(2) following the 2023 amendment. Part VII. [PF] [AI]

Finding 11.  A facially neutral statute administered by an executive-appointed board without structural insulation, whose guidelines are executive-issued, is susceptible to systematic viewpoint-selective application. The Constitution requires that the power of restriction meet the standards the Supreme Court has established, regardless of whether the statute’s text is facially neutral. Parts VII, IX. [AI]

Part E — The Villainy Gap

Finding 12.  Sikh criminality circulates. Sikh instrumentality is marketable. Sikh spectacle is certifiable. Sikh testimony that reattaches names, bodies, and institutions to the record of state violence faces substantially greater resistance. This pattern is the Villainy Gap. Parts II, V. [AI]

Finding 13.  The Villainy Gap requires no proof of anti-Sikh animus in any individual decision-maker. It is a structural inference from differential institutional outcomes, and its constitutional significance lies in what it reveals about the operation of a facially neutral law. Part V. [AI]

Part F — Religious Texture and Selective Application

Finding 14.  Sikh community members filed public complaints and notices regarding Dhurandhar 2, alleging depiction of a turbaned Sikh character smoking contrary to Sikh religious observance. The controversy existed in public record. Part VI. [PF]

Finding 15.  The exact scene and intent remain unresolved. The public-order, decency, and state-interest grounds invoked extensively against Punjab ’95 were not visibly applied to Dhurandhar 2 despite the religious-texture allegation. That differential is evidence of selective implementation. Part VI. [DA] [AI]

Part G — The Transnational Context

Finding 16.  Nikhil Gupta pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to conspiracy charges involving a plot targeting Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. This is a matter of public judicial record. Part VIII. [PF]

Finding 17.  Allegations concerning the Nijjar killing remain politically consequential but not adjudicatively settled in the same sense. Part VIII. [DA]

Finding 18.  Dhurandhar was produced and released in a public environment shaped by these proceedings and allegations. The film’s representational choices are politically charged by that context. The observation is political and analytical, not evidentiary proof of state guilt. Part VIII. [AI]

Part H — Constitutional Grounds

Finding 19.  Under S. Rangarajan, a public-order restriction on a film requires a proximate and direct connection to a real threat to civic order. Speculative administrative apprehension or the frown of intolerance is constitutionally insufficient. The reported demands on Punjab ’95 target historical specificity, not incitement. Part IX. [PF]

Finding 20.  Under Bobby Art International, a film dealing with serious violence, institutional abuse, or exploitation retains constitutional protection where it serves a legitimate social purpose. A film about a murdered investigator who exposed judicially documented state crimes self-evidently serves such a purpose. Part IX. [PF]

Finding 21.  Under K.A. Abbas, the power of pre-censorship certification must be exercised against clear, objective, and reviewable criteria. Demands that target the name of a documented victim, the name of an implicated institution, and the geographic precision of a historical narrative, without written statute-linked justification, do not satisfy that standard. Part IX. [PF]

Finding 22.  A pattern in which one category of historically grounded film is administratively immobilised while a comparable category is commercially facilitated raises a cognisable concern of viewpoint discrimination under Article 19(1)(a). The Constitution does not permit the certification authority to function as a viewpoint filter. Part IX. [AI]

PART I — THE CERTIFICATION RECORD

The contrast that animates this entire report begins at the level of public institutional record, and it is sufficiently plain that it can serve as the report’s entire premise if one is willing to let the record speak for itself.

Honey Trehan, the director of Punjab ’95, gave a public interview to NDTV in which he stated that the film had first been submitted to the CBFC in December 2022 and that the Board had demanded 127 cuts, after which there had been no meaningful movement toward release. [PF] He further stated that if the film were released with those changes, it would no longer be his or Diljit Dosanjh’s film. ABP reported on the censorship row and quoted Justice Ranjit Singh and Trehan on objections that reportedly included the removal of references to Punjab, Punjab Police, and Indira Gandhi. [DA] On the face of those reports, the concern animating the Board’s demands was not tone, cinematic excess, or gratuitous provocation. It was naming, attribution, and historical specificity: the connective tissue that makes a historical narrative verifiable rather than merely emotional.

By contrast, Dhurandhar 2 was reported as certified for release in March 2026 after edits to profanity, violence, subtitles, and documentation for references to the Prime Minister and news footage. [PF] There is no report of demands to rename the film, excise the protagonist’s community identity, strip references to the film’s institutional setting, or dissolve its geographic precision. The certification process was commercially conventional: costs negotiated, conditions met, certificate issued. That is how a functioning certification system is supposed to work for all films.

The disparity between these two certification histories is the report’s evidentiary starting point. One film, depicting Sikh identity in the service of state-useful violence, was processed through the certification regime in the ordinary commercial manner. The other, depicting Sikh identity as the instrument of documented historical accountability, was subjected to demands that would have dissolved its ability to attribute the history it depicts. [AI] The gap between those two outcomes is not explained by the films’ relative complexity, commercial potential, or degree of depicted violence. It is explained by what Sikh identity is doing in each narrative.

That is the first and most direct finding of this audit. Everything that follows is an attempt to explain, contextualise, and constitutionally locate that finding.

PART II — LEDGER VS. RIFLE

This part states the report’s central contrast in its most precise form. It is the conceptual axis on which the Villainy Gap turns.

Jaskirat Singh Rangi — known operationally as Hamza — is a fictional Sikh protagonist whose entire narrative function is martial. He moves through the grammar of covert force, retaliatory nationalism, and state-useful violence. Whether one admires or rejects that cinematic posture is analytically irrelevant. His function in the narrative is clear: he is a Sikh legible to the national-security imagination, [AI] a figure whose turbaned identity decorates and reinforces the state’s preferred account of muscular sovereignty. His violence does not threaten the institutional architecture that surrounds him. It services it.

Jaswant Singh Khalra is the inverse figure in every analytically important respect. He was not a fictional commando. He was a documented investigator whose weapon was not the rifle but the ledger. Human Rights Watch records that his method involved tracing firewood purchases at cremation grounds, examining cremation-ground registers, and mapping the administrative disposal of bodies through the machinery of the Punjab state. [PF] He did not require access to classified intelligence. He needed the state’s own bureaucratic records, and those records, examined by a careful archivist, were devastating. Bureaucracy, even when deployed to conceal, leaves seams. Khalra found those seams.

The constitutional significance of that contrast is precise. A rifle in a thriller can be trimmed, muted, age-restricted, and certified. The process is familiar, the standards are legible, and the outcome is commercially predictable. A ledger that leads from a municipal cremation register to police structures, to adjudicated abuse, to a Supreme Court finding of mass human-rights violation, does something a rifle cannot do: it reopens a real archive. [AI] It does not merely depict violence; it reconstructs the chain by which that violence may be connected to public institutional responsibility. It makes the state legible to its own public through the state’s own records.

That is why the Villainy Gap takes the form it does. The certifiable Sikh is the one whose identity can be instrumentalised in the service of national-security spectacle — whose violence illuminates the state’s preferred self-image. The uncertifiable Sikh is the one whose identity is inseparable from the act of archival witnessing — whose method of inquiry illuminates the state’s preferred silence. [AI]

The commando passes. The investigator does not.

That is not a rhetorical conclusion. It is an inference from a documented institutional record. Its constitutional implications are addressed in Part IX.

PART III — KHALRA AND THE JUDICIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL RECORD

The strongest part of this report is the part least dependent on argument. It is the part that rests on the hardest possible materials in the evidentiary hierarchy: judicial proceedings, court-ordered investigative findings, and the Supreme Court’s own language. These facts exist regardless of what any filmmaker, censor, or government official says about them. They do not require this report’s interpretation for their existence. They require it only for their significance to the constitutional analysis.

Jaswant Singh Khalra’s investigation began with a simple act of archival attention. He went to cremation grounds in Amritsar district and examined the registers. What he found, and what he then made public through press statements, court filings, and international human-rights advocacy, was a pattern that the state had apparently expected its own bureaucratic ordinariness to keep invisible: hundreds, then thousands, of bodies processed through cremation grounds with inadequate identification, minimal family notification, and a disturbing pattern of classification as ‘unidentified’ or ‘unclaimed.’ The pattern was consistent with what the international human-rights literature on the Punjab counterinsurgency period had characterised as enforced disappearance at scale.

In September 1995, Khalra was abducted outside his home. Criminal proceedings subsequently established that he was abducted and murdered in police custody. [PF] The government’s early attempt to distance itself from the abduction collapsed as state agents were implicated. [PF] His widow, Paramjit Kaur Khalra, filed proceedings before the Supreme Court of India. Those proceedings resulted in the Court ordering a CBI inquiry into Khalra’s abduction and into the pattern of secret cremations his investigation had documented. [PF]

The CBI’s December 1996 report, as summarised in Human Rights Watch documentation and referenced in the Supreme Court proceedings, recorded at least 2,098 illegal cremations in Amritsar district alone. [PF] The Supreme Court of India, in the proceedings arising from Paramjit Kaur Khalra’s petition, described the findings as disclosing a flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale. [PF] Those words are not this report’s characterisation. They are the Supreme Court of India’s characterisation, in formal proceedings, of the evidence generated by its own court-ordered inquiry.

These are [PF] materials of the highest available order. Adjudicated findings. Court-ordered investigative records. The Supreme Court’s own language. They do not depend on political sympathy, community advocacy, or journalistic enterprise for their validity. They exist in the formal legal record of the Republic of India.

Their significance for the certification analysis is direct and severe. A film about Jaswant Singh Khalra is not a film about speculative grievance. It is a film about a documented investigator whose method generated evidence that a court-ordered CBI inquiry confirmed, and whose abduction and murder were established in criminal proceedings. The question of whether such a film should be certifiable is not a close case. It is answered by the very case law this report examines: Bobby Art International holds that serious subject matter does not lose constitutional protection merely because it is disturbing or implicates institutional actors. A film about proved events involving a proved investigator dealing with a proved pattern of proved violations is precisely the kind of historical cinema that constitutional protection for expression was designed to preserve. [PF]

What the reported demands made of Punjab ’95 would do to that chain of accountability is therefore not a matter of editorial judgment. It is a matter of evidentiary consequence. Removing Khalra’s name severs the narrative from the investigator who made the evidence visible. Removing references to Punjab Police severs the narrative from the institution that criminal proceedings implicated. Changing the title from Punjab ’95 to something geographically and temporally generic dissolves the chronological precision that allows the viewer to locate the film in a known and documented historical sequence. [AI] Each demanded change performs the same function: it weakens the chain by which cinematic experience may be connected to documentary proof.

PART IV — TOPONYMIC AND IDENTITY ERASURE

One of the analytically strongest points in this report is also one of the most linguistically precise: the reported demand to remove ‘Punjab,’ ‘Punjab Police,’ and related terms from Punjab ’95 is not simply censorship. It is an attempt to un-name the crime scene. [AI]

The legal significance of naming in an accountability narrative cannot be overstated. Names are not decorative in historical cinema dealing with institutional violence. They are the evidentiary coordinates that allow a narrative to be tested against an external record. ‘Punjab’ in this film is not a mood or a setting. It is a jurisdiction with a specific administrative history, a specific set of judicial proceedings, a specific Supreme Court finding, and a specific CBI report. ‘Punjab Police’ is not a generic law-enforcement label. It is the specific public institution whose members were convicted in the criminal proceedings arising from Khalra’s abduction and murder. When those names are present in the film, the viewer can, if they choose, trace the narrative outward to the public record. When those names are removed, that traceability is severed.

The constitutional dimension is equally direct. In S. Rangarajan, the Supreme Court held that restriction of a film cannot be justified by the mere possibility that some section of the population will react adversely. [PF] Naming Punjab Police in a film about Khalra’s investigation does not incite public disorder. It attributes historical responsibility to an institution that criminal and judicial proceedings have already associated with that responsibility. The administrative discomfort generated by that attribution is precisely the kind of institutional sensitivity that Rangarajan says the constitution does not protect. [PF] [AI]

The Udta Punjab episode is directly relevant here and must be understood as more than a parallel anecdote. When the CBFC sought 89 cuts to Udta Punjab in 2016, including the film’s title and references to Punjab, the Board was not responding to a unique feature of that film. [PF] It was expressing an institutional reflex: discomfort with Punjab as a named site of structural harm, regardless of the specific narrative at issue. The same reflex appears to have been applied to Punjab ’95 with even greater force. Two separate films, in two separate years, on two separate subjects, subjected to the same institutional demand: un-name Punjab. That is not coincidence. It is a pattern. [AI]

The constitutional implication of that pattern is significant. A regulatory authority that systematically targets the geographic and institutional precision of historically grounded narratives dealing with state conduct in a specific region is not exercising the public-order power that Section 5B and Article 19(2) permit. It is exercising a historical-management power that no provision of the Constitution authorises. [AI]

And memory, when deliberately deprived of coordinates, becomes rumour. Rumour is what the state finds manageable. Evidence, with its names and dates and institutions intact, is what the state finds dangerous. The reported demands on Punjab ’95 appear to have been designed to convert the former into the latter.

PART V — THE STATUTORY NORMALISATION OF THE SIKH ANTAGONIST

The phrase ‘Villainy Gap’ must be understood as a forensic finding with constitutional content, not as a rhetorical device. It names, as precisely as the record permits, the differential institutional outcome that the certification regime appears to produce when Sikh identity appears in different political functions.

What the record suggests is this: Sikh-coded menace is easier to certify than Sikh-coded witness. [AI] The certification regime, as presently administered, appears more comfortable with Sikh identity when it functions as threat or as force than when it functions as archive or testimony. The regime appears willing to certify the Sikh body as the site of spectacular violence — whether that violence serves the state as patriotic instrument or the audience as consumable antagonist — but appears to encounter systematic institutional friction when the Sikh body is the site of historical documentation that implicates state institutions.

This finding does not require proof of anti-Sikh animus in any individual board member, officer, or official. That would be a different and harder claim, requiring evidence of subjective intent that the public record does not contain. The Villainy Gap is a structural inference, not an accusation of personal prejudice. [AI] Its constitutional significance lies not in what it says about motive but in what it says about outcome. The Supreme Court’s equal-treatment jurisprudence does not require proof of discriminatory intent to establish a cognisable constitutional concern. It requires proof of differential impact without adequate neutral justification. The record here establishes the differential impact. The record does not establish the neutral justification.

The three-part taxonomy of the certifiable Sikh, the tolerable Sikh, and the erased Sikh has explanatory force precisely because it is derived from the record rather than imposed upon it. [AI] The good Sikh — the commando, the patriot, the spectacular body of nationalist cinema — is certifiable because his identity serves the state’s preferred narrative. The bad Sikh — the turbaned antagonist, the sectarian menace, the caricatured danger at the frontier — is tolerable because his villainy confirms the state’s preferred account of the threat it faces. The erased Sikh — the investigator who documents what the state did — is resisted because his presence in the national audiovisual record would force the certification regime to authorise a public confrontation with evidence the state has never fully answered for.

The system appears willing to certify the Sikh as commando, tolerate the Sikh as caricature, but resist the Sikh as witness.

That is the Villainy Gap. And its constitutional significance is this: a certification authority that produces such a pattern is not exercising the public-order and state-security powers that Section 5B and Article 19(2) authorise. It is exercising a viewpoint-selective filtering power that the Constitution does not confer and that the Supreme Court’s censorship jurisprudence expressly constrains. [AI]

PART VI — RELIGIOUS TEXTURE AND SELECTIVE CONCERN

The controversy over alleged smoking imagery in Dhurandhar 2 is analytically useful to this report, but it must be handled with evidentiary discipline proportionate to what the record actually establishes.

Public reporting states that Sikh community members objected to visuals allegedly showing Ranveer Singh’s Sikh character smoking while wearing a turban, and that notices and formal complaints were filed on the ground that tobacco use is prohibited in Sikh religious practice. [PF] The controversy existed in public form. That is a proved finding. The precise content of the scene and the producer’s authorial intent remain unresolved. [DA] This report makes no finding about the scene’s content, because the public record does not establish it with sufficient precision to support a [PF] finding.

The legal point that the controversy does support must therefore be framed with care. Section 5B of the Cinematograph Act does not explicitly protect religious sentiments as a freestanding category. The statute’s operative terms are public order, decency, morality, and state-security. A claim grounded in religious propriety must be channelled through those categories to become legally cognisable under the Act.

The constitutionally significant observation is therefore not about the smoking scene in isolation. It is about proportionality of application. The same broad public-order, decency, and state-interest reasoning that was apparently used to justify approximately 127 cuts to a historically grounded Sikh witness film was not visibly or comparably applied to a commercially prominent film that Sikh community members publicly alleged to have distorted Sikh religious texture. [AI] That is not a contradiction in Section 5B’s text. The statute permits both interventions. It is a contradiction in practice. It is evidence that the statutory tools available to the Board were selectively activated: energetically applied where the narrative implicated state institutions, and comparatively inactive where the narrative was commercially valuable and state-friendly.

Selective implementation of a facially neutral regulatory power is a recognised constitutional concern independent of the underlying statute’s validity. Abbas establishes that the certification power must be exercised against clear and reviewable criteria. [PF] A pattern in which comparable triggers produce dramatically different institutional responses raises the question of whether the criteria being applied are the statutory ones or whether something else is generating the asymmetry. [AI]

PART VII — GOVERNANCE, DISCRETION, AND THE CBFC-MINISTRY STRUCTURE

The governance analysis in this part proceeds from [PF] institutional facts to constitutional inference. The starting point is the CBFC’s own authoritative self-description, which is more important to this analysis than any external characterisation of the Board’s behaviour could be.

The Board is a statutory body under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. [PF] Its Chairperson and board members are appointed by the Central Government. [PF] Its advisory panels, which assist regional offices in the practical certification of individual films, are nominated by the Central Government. [PF] The certification process, in the Board’s own description, follows the Act, the Rules, and the guidelines issued by the Central Government under Section 5B(2). [PF] Not one of those structural facts is disputed. They are the Board’s own account of itself.

The constitutional significance of that structure was addressed by the Supreme Court in K.A. Abbas v. Union of India (1970), the foundational case on the constitutional validity of film pre-censorship. [PF] The Court upheld pre-censorship as a permissible restriction under Article 19(2) but simultaneously established that the power must be exercised against clear, objective, and reviewable criteria. The Abbas judgment is not a blank cheque for administrative discretion. It is a conditional permission: the power is valid, but it must be exercised in a manner that satisfies constitutional requirements of reasonableness, non-arbitrariness, and reviewability.

An institution whose chair, members, and advisory panels are all Central Government appointees, whose guiding principles are Central Government-issued directives, and whose parent ministry is the executive branch of the state does not enter the certification field as a neutral administrator. That is not an accusation. It is a structural description. [AI] The issue is not whether individual board members act in subjective good faith. The issue is whether the institutional architecture of the Board is capable of producing genuinely independent decisions when the narratives under review implicate the reputational interests of state institutions. The answer, on the basis of the structural record alone, is that genuine independence cannot be presumed in such cases. It must be demonstrated.

The 2023 amendment’s omission of Section 6(1) — which had historically given the Central Government explicit power to revise any CBFC order — is a relevant structural change, but it does not alter the fundamental architecture of dependence. [PF] Section 6(2) preserves Central Government residual authority. [PF] The appointment mechanism remains unchanged. [PF] The guideline-issuing authority under Section 5B(2) remains unchanged. [PF] The Ministry’s supervisory relationship to the Board remains unchanged. The 2023 amendment removed a visible tool of override while leaving the deeper conditions of institutional susceptibility intact.

What this architecture does not produce is the kind of administrative independence that the Supreme Court’s Abbas requirements presuppose. Abbas requires that certification decisions be made against clear and reviewable criteria. [PF] Criteria that are Central Government-issued, applied by Central Government appointees, and insulated from no structural check when state-reputational concerns are at stake, are not the kind of clear and reviewable criteria the Court envisioned. The institutional structure is the argument. It does not require conspiracy. It requires only the elementary observation that institutional design shapes institutional outcome. [AI]

The strongest formulation is therefore this: the Board is not merely susceptible to political preference in theory. It operates within a structural framework that would make genuine independence, in the specific context of films implicating state institutional responsibility, architecturally improbable even in the absence of any explicit direction from above. [AI] That improbability, documented through [PF] institutional facts and measured against Abbas standards, is a constitutional concern that the existing record already supports.

PART VIII — THE TRANSNATIONAL MOMENT AND EVIDENTIARY RESTRAINT

This part of the analysis is constrained by what the evidentiary record permits, and the constraint is stated explicitly before the observation is made. Evidentiary discipline requires that the hardest materials not be conflated with the softer ones, and that the reader be able to see exactly what status each claim carries.

It is a matter of public judicial record that Nikhil Gupta pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to conspiracy charges in connection with a plot targeting Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a prominent Sikh-American activist and attorney. [PF] That guilty plea is the hardest available evidentiary fact in this part of the analysis. A defendant chose to accept criminal liability in a federal proceeding rather than contest the charges. That is an adjudicative act of maximum formal certainty within the criminal justice system of the United States.

It is separately a matter of public record — though of a significantly different evidentiary weight — that the Canadian government has made public allegations attributing the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surry, British Columbia in June 2023 to agents connected to the Government of India. [DA] Those allegations are diplomatically consequential and politically explosive. Criminal proceedings in Canada have been initiated. But the specific institutional attribution involved has not been established in an adjudicative proceeding of comparable finality to a federal guilty plea. This report marks it [DA] and maintains that distinction against any pressure to treat it otherwise.

The legitimate analytical observation that can be made from these two bodies of material is this: Dhurandhar was produced and released in a public environment already shaped by a federal guilty plea and by internationally prominent allegations involving the alleged targeting of Sikh activists abroad. [AI] A film about covert Indian operations targeting members of the Sikh diaspora, produced in that environment, does not exist in a political or representational vacuum. The film’s choices about who is the hero, what Sikh identity signifies, and what relationship the state bears to the diaspora are made in that charged atmosphere and are received in it. That observation is political and representational. It is not a finding of institutional guilt.

The evidentiary restraint here is deliberate and structural. This report’s credibility depends on maintaining the same disciplined distinction between [PF] and [DA] in every part of the analysis, including the parts where the temptation to reach for a stronger formulation is greatest. The transnational context is important precisely because it is charged. That charge does not exempt it from the same evidentiary standards that govern the rest of the document.

PART IX — CONSTITUTIONAL IMPLICATIONS AND CORRECTIVE PRINCIPLES

This is the report’s remedial register. It takes the evidentiary record assembled in the preceding parts and translates it into constitutional doctrine and proposed corrective principles. The purpose is not to draft a prayer in any specific proceeding. The purpose is to articulate, with sufficient precision and doctrinal grounding, the standards that a constitutional court could adopt, that the Board could operationalise, or that Parliament could codify, in order to prevent the documented asymmetry from operating in future cases.

The Constitutional Framework

Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India guarantees freedom of speech and expression. Article 19(2) permits the State to impose reasonable restrictions on the exercise of that freedom in the interests of sovereignty, security, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency, morality, or in relation to defamation, contempt, or incitement. The operative word in Article 19(2) is ‘reasonable.’ A restriction is not constitutionally valid merely because it is authorised by statute. It must also be reasonable in character, which the Supreme Court has progressively defined through its censorship jurisprudence as requiring proportionality, non-arbitrariness, and viewpoint neutrality.

Three cases establish the doctrinal framework that this report applies to the certification record.

K.A. Abbas v. Union of India (1970) 2 SCC 780 is the foundational judgment. The Court upheld the constitutionality of film pre-censorship as a reasonable restriction under Article 19(2), but it established a crucial constraint: the certification power must be exercised against clear, objective, and reviewable criteria. [PF] Vague or subjective standards that give the certifying authority unlimited discretion are constitutionally suspect. The importance of Abbas for this report is precisely this: it says that the power is valid, but its exercise is constrained by the requirement of clarity and reviewability. Administrative demands that cannot be traced to a clear statutory criterion and that cannot be independently reviewed do not satisfy the Abbas standard.

S. Rangarajan v. P. Jagjivan Ram (1989) 2 SCC 574 is the most directly relevant case and it established a constitutional standard of lasting importance. [PF] The Court held that the test for restricting a film on public-order grounds requires a proximate and direct connection between the film and a real threat to civic order. Mere apprehension on the part of an administrative authority, speculation about how some section of the population might react, and the general sense that a film is controversial or that some viewers might object strongly to it are constitutionally insufficient grounds for restriction or refusal. The Court’s language was explicit: the institution of law cannot bow down before the frown of intolerance. If the film does not directly incite unlawful action, the public-order ground under Article 19(2) is not engaged.

The implications of Rangarajan for the certification of Punjab ’95 are direct. [AI] A film that names Punjab Police in the context of a judicial record in which Punjab Police officers were convicted is not inciting violence. It is attributing established liability to a named institution. The administrative discomfort generated by that attribution is not public disorder. It is institutional sensitivity. And Rangarajan says, without ambiguity, that institutional sensitivity does not engage the Article 19(2) public-order ground.

Bobby Art International v. Om Pal Singh Hoon (1996) 4 SCC 1, the Bandit Queen case, established a principle of equal constitutional importance. [PF] The Court upheld certification of a film dealing with graphic violence, sexual exploitation, and institutional complicity on the ground that serious subject matter does not lose constitutional protection merely because it is disturbing, graphic, or implicates powerful actors. The test is not whether the material is comfortable. The test is whether it serves a legitimate communicative or social purpose. A film about caste violence and sexual abuse cleared that threshold. A film about a murdered investigator who documented judicially confirmed state crimes clears it with considerably greater force.

Proposed Corrective Principles

The following six principles are proposed as the minimum corrective standards that the evidentiary and constitutional analysis of this report supports. They are stated in terms precise enough to be judicially adoptable, administratively operable, and legislatively codifiable. They do not require amendment to the Cinematograph Act. They require the Board, the courts, and the Central Government to apply the Act in a manner consistent with the constitutional constraints that Abbas, Rangarajan, and Bobby Art have already established.

Principle I: The Proportionality and Proximity Requirement.  Any public-order justification for a certification demand must satisfy the Rangarajan standard: a proximate, direct, and documented connection between the specific content at issue and a real, as opposed to speculative or apprehended, threat to civic order. Administrative discomfort, institutional sensitivity, political controversy, or the possibility that some members of the public might react adversely do not satisfy this standard. A certification authority invoking the public-order ground under Section 5B and Article 19(2) must be able to identify the specific content, the specific mechanism of harm, and the proximate causal connection between them. Generalised sensitivity about a historical subject or region does not supply those elements.

Principle II: The Attribution Principle.  A historically grounded film dealing with adjudicated events, documented institutional conduct, and named individuals whose roles have been established in judicial or official proceedings may not be subjected to demands requiring the removal of historically verifiable identity markers — including names of investigators, names of implicated institutions, geographic designations, and temporal precision — unless those markers are demonstrably false or defamatory. The removal of identity markers that are historically accurate, judicially documented, and essential to the film’s accountability function is not a permissible exercise of the public-order power. It is an exercise of a historical-management power that the Constitution does not authorise.

Principle III: The Written Justification Requirement.  Any demand for a substantial cut to a historically grounded film must be accompanied by a written, statute-linked, and independently reviewable justification. That justification must identify the statutory provision engaged, the specific content raising the concern, and whether the content at issue constitutes a proved fact, a contested allegation, or a fictional element. A demand that cannot be traced to a specific statutory criterion and that cannot be independently reviewed on its merits does not satisfy the Abbas standard of clear and reviewable criteria. The obligation of written justification is not a procedural nicety. It is the minimum condition of reviewable administrative action.

Principle IV: The Non-Arbitrariness Standard.  The certification authority must be capable of demonstrating, when challenged, that comparable standards were applied to comparable films. A regime that imposes identity-erasing demands on a film dealing with state institutional conduct while certifying without comparable scrutiny a film dealing with comparable subject matter in a state-validating register cannot be presumed to be applying content-neutral criteria. The constitutional requirement of non-arbitrariness under Articles 14 and 19 applies to administrative action including certification decisions. Differential treatment requires a content-neutral and judicially reviewable explanation.

Principle V: The Viewpoint Neutrality Principle.  A certification regime that systematically burdens narratives critical of state institutional conduct while facilitating narratives that validate state institutional conduct is not exercising the regulatory power that Article 19(2) confers. It is exercising a viewpoint-selective filtering power. The distinction between a legitimate content-based restriction — based on the actual character of the material, its impact, its purpose — and a viewpoint-based restriction — based on whether the material supports or challenges the state’s preferred account of events — is a foundational constitutional distinction. The former is permissible within Article 19(2)’s terms. The latter is not.

Principle VI: The Chilling Effect Doctrine.  Administrative processes so burdensome, so prolonged, and so structurally weighted against specific categories of historically grounded cinema as to discourage their production altogether constitute an unconstitutional chilling effect on the Article 19(1)(a) right. A filmmaker who has observed a peer’s film subjected to 127 demanded cuts, two and a half years of administrative immobilisation, and demands for identity-erasing modifications, may reasonably conclude that historically grounded films dealing with state institutional conduct are not worth producing. That conclusion, if it becomes widespread, amounts to the suppression of an entire category of constitutionally protected expression without a formal ban. The chilling effect doctrine requires that administrative processes be designed and operated so as not to produce that result.

The Standard That Does Not Yet Exist

The six principles above are not novel constitutional theory. They are applications of doctrine the Supreme Court has already established to a factual context the Court has not yet directly addressed. What is missing from India’s constitutional architecture is not the doctrinal foundation; Abbas, Rangarajan, and Bobby Art supply that. What is missing is a case in which the doctrinal foundation has been applied to the specific problem of identity-erasing demands in historically grounded cinema dealing with unresolved state institutional accountability.

That gap is what the Villainy Gap, as a constitutional doctrine, is designed to fill. It identifies the pattern, grounds it in the record, applies the existing doctrine, and proposes the standards that would correct it. It does not require new legislation. It requires the existing constitutional framework to be applied with the rigour and consistency that the Supreme Court’s own judgments already demand.

CONCLUSION

The public record assembled in this report does not merely show that one film had trouble and another did not. It shows a pattern of selective certification asymmetry whose constitutional dimensions this report has attempted to map with precision.

Sikh identity is more readily circulated through the Indian certification regime when it can be used as force or as threat. Sikh identity becomes harder to circulate when it becomes archive, accusation, and adjudicated memory. [AI] That differential, measured against the proportionality requirement of S. Rangarajan, the purpose principle of Bobby Art International, and the reviewability requirement of K.A. Abbas, is not merely a political complaint. It is a constitutional argument with a documented evidentiary foundation.

Punjab ’95 is threatening not because it is obscene, not because it is profane, not because it is cinematically excessive, and not because it depicts violence that the certification system does not ordinarily process. It is threatening because it restores names, institutions, and geographic precision to a field of adjudicated state violence. [AI] It is threatening because it places a real investigator, a real institution, a real year, and a real documented pattern in the same cinematic frame and asks a mass audience to look at all of them together. That is not a public-order problem. It is an accountability problem. And accountability problems, dressed in public-order language, are precisely what Rangarajan said the constitution does not permit the state to suppress.

Dhurandhar, by contrast, is absorbable. [AI] It places Sikh identity inside a familiar grammar of national-security spectacle, decorating the state’s preferred narrative with a turbaned protagonist whose violence serves rather than scrutinises the institutional architecture around him. The certification regime does not merely tolerate that film. It processes it efficiently, commercially, and without the demands for identity dissolution that its companion in this audit has faced for over two years.

The commando passes. The investigator does not. That is the Villainy Gap. And the Villainy Gap is a constitutional problem.

The conclusion of this audit is not that the system hates Sikhs. Accusation of motive, without adequate evidentiary support, would weaken rather than strengthen an argument that the record already supports without it. The conclusion is that the system, as presently administered, produces differential outcomes for Sikh identity depending on its political function; that those differential outcomes cannot be explained by content-neutral statutory criteria; that the statutory architecture of the CBFC makes those outcomes structurally plausible; and that the Supreme Court’s censorship jurisprudence supplies the doctrinal tools to correct them.

This is not the end of the inquiry. It is a documented point of entry into one that the public record demands, and that the Constitution of India, properly applied, is fully equipped to conduct.

APPENDIX A — EVIDENTIARY TIMELINE

The following is a chronological narrative of the key events most directly relevant to this audit. It is a structured inventory of the materials on which the Formal Findings depend. Each event carries its applicable evidentiary tag. Where a single event involves both a proved finding and a documented allegation, both tags are carried and the distinction explained.

September 1995. [PF]  Jaswant Singh Khalra is abducted outside his home in Amritsar by state agents, after publicly pursuing his investigation into disappearances and secret cremations across Punjab. This is a matter of judicial record established in subsequent criminal proceedings.

December 1996. [PF]  The CBI report summarised by Human Rights Watch and referenced in the Supreme Court proceedings records at least 2,098 illegal cremations in Amritsar district alone. The Supreme Court of India, in proceedings arising from Paramjit Kaur Khalra’s petition, describes the inquiry’s findings as a flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale.

Criminal Proceedings — Conviction of Officers. [PF]  Criminal proceedings arising from Khalra’s abduction and murder result in the conviction of Punjab Police officers. The criminal record establishes that Khalra was murdered in police custody and that state agents were responsible.

2016. [PF]  The CBFC seeks 89 cuts to Udta Punjab, including the film’s title and references to Punjab. This episode provides an earlier data point for the pattern of toponymic censorial discomfort with Punjab as a named site of structural harm. The film is eventually certified following court intervention.

December 2022. [PF]  Punjab ’95 is first submitted to the CBFC, per director Honey Trehan’s public statements to NDTV.

July 2025. [PF] [DA]  Honey Trehan publicly states that Punjab ’95 remains stalled and that the CBFC has demanded approximately 127 cuts. Public reporting, including ABP, quotes Trehan and Justice Ranjit Singh on demands reportedly including removal of references to Punjab, Punjab Police, and Indira Gandhi. The fact of the director’s statement is [PF]. The precise content of specific demands attributed to the CBFC is [DA].

March 2026. [PF]  Dhurandhar 2 is reported as certified with an ‘A’ certificate after commercial edits to violence, profanity, subtitles, and permissions-related material including references to the Prime Minister and news footage.

March 2026 — Smoking Controversy. [PF] [DA]  Public controversy arises over visuals in Dhurandhar 2 allegedly depicting a turbaned Sikh character smoking. Complaints and notices are filed. The controversy existed in public record [PF]. The precise content of the scene and the producer’s intent remain unresolved [DA].

2026 — Nikhil Gupta Guilty Plea. [PF]  Nikhil Gupta pleads guilty in Manhattan federal court to conspiracy charges in connection with a plot involving Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. This is a matter of public judicial record.

Taken together, this timeline describes a certification regime that processed a historical witness film through more than two and a half years of reported obstruction while processing a contemporary nationalist spectacle through standard commercial certification in the same period. The temporal proximity is analytically significant. [AI] These are not separated by decades of changing institutional culture. They are contemporaneous.

APPENDIX B — PATH OF CERTIFICATION: ANALYTICAL ACCOUNT

The following narrative account renders the divergent institutional pathways faced by the two films under comparison. Where a schematic diagram would use nodes and arrows, this account uses institutional reasoning and evidentiary classification. The purpose is identical: to make visible the structural divergence that the Formal Findings identify and that the sectional analysis explains.

Both films enter the certification regime through the same formal gateway. A film is submitted to the CBFC. The Board reviews it against the criteria of the Cinematograph Act and the Central Government-issued guidelines under Section 5B. [PF] On paper, the process is identical for every submission. The record suggests that in practice, the process is not identical, and that the divergence is structured rather than random.

The Dhurandhar pathway is the pathway of state-legible force and marketable menace. The film’s Sikh identity is martial, deployable, and absorbed into the grammar of nationalist espionage cinema. It does not challenge the state’s account of itself. It ratifies it. The certification record for this pathway describes commercial edits: violence trimmed, profanity addressed, subtitles corrected, permissions documented for references to the Prime Minister and news footage. [PF] These are adjustments of tone, propriety, and rights compliance. They do not alter the film’s ability to name its protagonist, locate its action in a recognisable institutional world, or tell the story it set out to tell. An ‘A’ certificate is issued. The release proceeds.

The Punjab ’95 pathway is the pathway of archive, witness, and institutional accusation. The film’s Sikh identity is investigative, archival, and inseparable from a documented record that the state has not fully answered for. It challenges the state’s preferred account of the Punjab of the 1990s. The certification record for this pathway describes reported demands for deep cuts: the name of the protagonist, the name of the institution implicated in his murder, the geographic precision of the title itself, the religious soundscape that locates the suffering in a community of faith. [DA] These are not adjustments of tone and propriety. They are attempts to sever the film from its own evidentiary foundation. What follows from those demands, if accurately reported, is not a modified film but a dissolved one.

The constitutional question raised by this divergence is not whether the two films are identical. They are not. The constitutional question is whether the divergent treatment is explained by content-neutral statutory criteria or by the political function of Sikh identity in each film. The Rangarajan standard, the Bobby Art purpose principle, and the Abbas reviewability requirement supply the criteria against which that question must be answered. [AI] The record, applied against those criteria, supports the inference that the divergence is not explained by content-neutral statutory grounds.

The commando passes. The investigator does not.

APPENDIX C — SOURCE HIERARCHY AND EVIDENTIARY METHOD

How to Use the Evidentiary Bibliography

The bibliography that follows this appendix is not a formality. It is the documentary engine of this report. Every source listed was relied upon in the drafting of the analysis. The bibliography is organised by category, not alphabetically, because category clarifies function. A statute and a newspaper report may both be referenced in the same paragraph of the main text, but they do not carry the same evidentiary weight, serve the same argumentative purpose, or require the same level of scrutiny from a reader testing the argument.

Source Hierarchy: Five Tiers

Tier 1 — Adjudicated Judicial Record.  The hardest materials in the document. Court findings, criminal convictions, Supreme Court judgments, and formal judicial proceedings. These establish facts that exist in the constitutional and criminal record of the Republic regardless of political preference. The CBI’s December 1996 cremation report, the Supreme Court’s flagrant-violation language, the criminal conviction of officers in the Khalra case, and the U.S. federal guilty plea in the Gupta case are all Tier 1 materials. They carry [PF] weight as a matter of evidentiary first principle.

Tier 2 — Statutory and Institutional Text.  The operative text of the Cinematograph Act and its provisions, the CBFC’s own institutional self-description, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s relationship to the Board as described in official documentation. These establish the legal and institutional architecture of the regime under analysis. They carry [PF] weight as primary text. Disagreement with the analysis derived from them requires engagement with the text itself.

Tier 3 — Human Rights Institutional Documentation.  Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, NHRC, and comparable bodies. Where these organisations summarise Tier 1 materials, they carry [PF] weight for those summaries. Where they independently document patterns of abuse through field research and primary testimony, they are serious evidentiary sources of a different but still substantial character. The distinction matters: this report relied on Human Rights Watch to access the CBI and Supreme Court findings, not to substitute its own assessment for those findings.

Tier 4 — Journalism and Reported Sources.  Journalistic sources carry [PF] weight for the undisputed existence of a controversy, a public statement, or a recorded event. They carry [DA] weight for the specific content of allegations, demands, or contested claims whose precise character has not been adjudicatively established. The NDTV interview with Honey Trehan is [PF] as a statement the director made. The specific demands attributed to the CBFC in that interview and in ABP’s reporting are [DA] as to their precise content. This distinction was maintained throughout the main report and must be maintained by any reader who relies on this bibliography for subsequent work.

Tier 5 — Academic, Comparative, and Analytical Sources.  Scholarly work, comparative frameworks, and conceptual analysis. These sources do not establish facts in the primary evidentiary sense. They supply the analytical vocabulary, contextual depth, and interpretive frameworks that allow the primary record to be understood rather than merely assembled. All inferences derived from these sources are [AI] and are so marked. A reader who challenges an [AI] must engage with the quality of the inference and the adequacy of the primary materials on which it rests.

Standards of Evidentiary Weight

A [PF] finding is not strengthened by repetition and is not weakened by political inconvenience. A [DA] finding is exactly as strong as the reporting that documents it and no stronger. An [AI] is exactly as strong as the [PF] and [DA] materials from which it is derived and no stronger. This report did not allow the emotional or political force of an argument to elevate its evidentiary classification. Readers should apply the same discipline.

Limits of the Record

This report was drafted on the basis of publicly available material. It does not have access to the CBFC’s internal correspondence, the Board’s written deliberations, or any non-public administrative record relating to either film. The analysis of governance in Part VII is structural rather than transactional: it describes the institutional architecture rather than specific communications within it. Any reader who possesses superior primary materials bearing on the specific certification decisions analysed here is invited to bring them into the public record. This bibliography, and the report it supports, are published in the expectation and hope of adversarial engagement, not insulated from it.

EVIDENTIARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Every source that follows was relied upon in the drafting of this report. Entries are organised by category to preserve the source hierarchy established in Appendix C. Each entry carries its evidentiary tag and an annotation explaining its precise function in the analysis.

I. Statutory and Legislative Sources

The Cinematograph Act, 1952

 [PF] The primary statutory instrument governing film certification in India. The foundational legal text for the governance analysis in Part VII, the constitutional analysis in Part IX, and every statutory argument throughout. The Act establishes the CBFC, defines its powers, and provides for Central Government oversight. The entirety of Section 5B analysis flows from this text.

Section 5B(1), Cinematograph Act, 1952

 [PF] The operative provision permitting certification refusal or condition on public-order, state-security, sovereignty, decency, morality, defamation, contempt, and incitement grounds. Relied upon in Parts VI, VII, and IX to demonstrate the Act’s textual breadth and the constitutional constraints its application must satisfy under Rangarajan and Abbas.

Section 5B(2), Cinematograph Act, 1952

 [PF] Authorises the Central Government to issue written directions guiding CBFC certification. Central to the governance argument in Part VII: the Board applies Central Government-issued guidelines, making its formal independence structurally incomplete.

Section 6(2), Cinematograph Act, 1952 (retained after 2023 amendment)

 [PF] Preserves residual Central Government revisional authority following the 2023 omission of Section 6(1). Cited in Part VII and Finding 10 as evidence that the Board’s insulation from executive power remains structurally limited despite the amendment.

Cinematograph (Amendment) Act, 2023

 [PF] Omitted Section 6(1). A relevant structural change that did not fundamentally alter the conditions of institutional susceptibility. Cited in Part VII.

Cinematograph (Certification) Rules, 1983

 [PF] Procedural rules governing submission, panel constitution, and appeals. Background to the governance analysis.

Guidelines for Certification of Films for Public Exhibition, CBFC

 [PF] The Board’s own operative certification standards, issued under Section 5B(2). Their status as Central Government-issued directives applied by Central Government appointees is central to the Abbas-based reviewability argument.

Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021

 [PF] Extended state regulatory reach over streaming platforms. Relevant to the observation in Appendix C that the ecosystem of attrition facing historical cinema extends beyond theatrical certification.

II. Institutional Sources

CBFC — Official Institutional Self-Description

 [PF] The Board’s own public materials confirming: statutory status under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting; Central Government appointment of chairperson and board; Central Government nomination of advisory panels; Central Government-issued certification guidelines. The foundational [PF] for the governance analysis. Not disputed by the Board itself.

Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India

 [PF] The CBFC’s parent ministry. Its supervisory, appointment, and directive relationship to the Board is central to the structural analysis of Board independence in Part VII.

III. Judicial and Adjudicated Records

Paramjit Kaur Khalra v. State of Punjab — Supreme Court of India

 [PF] Supreme Court proceedings resulting in a CBI inquiry into Khalra’s abduction and the cremation pattern. The Court’s ‘flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale’ characterisation is a formal judicial finding. The hardest [PF] in the Khalra historical record. Cited in Part III, Findings 5 and 6.

Criminal Proceedings — Abduction and Murder of Jaswant Singh Khalra

 [PF] Criminal convictions of Punjab Police officers for Khalra’s abduction and murder established in formal criminal proceedings. Judicial record of the highest evidentiary order. Cited throughout Part III.

CBI Report, December 1996 — Cremations in Amritsar District

 [PF] Court-ordered CBI investigative report recording at least 2,098 illegal cremations in Amritsar district alone. The Government of India’s own investigative agency’s finding. Not an NGO projection or advocacy estimate. Central to Part III and Findings 4–6.

United States v. Nikhil Gupta — Manhattan Federal Court, Guilty Plea

 [PF] Federal guilty plea to conspiracy charges involving a plot targeting Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. Maximum adjudicative certainty. Cited in Part VIII and Finding 16.

S. Rangarajan v. P. Jagjivan Ram (1989) 2 SCC 574 — Supreme Court of India

 [PF] The foundational censorship-and-public-order judgment. Established the proportionality and proximity standard: restriction requires a direct, proximate nexus between the film and a real threat to civic order. Speculative apprehension and the frown of intolerance are constitutionally insufficient. Active doctrinal weapon throughout Parts IV, VI, VII, and IX.

Bobby Art International v. Om Pal Singh Hoon (1996) 4 SCC 1 — Supreme Court of India

 [PF] Bandit Queen. Established that serious, disturbing, or institutionally implicating subject matter does not lose constitutional protection where the film serves a legitimate social purpose. Directly applicable to a film about a murdered human-rights investigator dealing with judicially confirmed state crimes. Active doctrinal weapon throughout Parts III, VII, and IX.

K.A. Abbas v. Union of India (1970) 2 SCC 780 — Supreme Court of India

 [PF] Foundational pre-censorship constitutionality case. Upholding pre-censorship as permissible under Article 19(2) while establishing that the power must be exercised against clear, objective, and reviewable criteria. The reviewability requirement is the doctrinal ground for the written justification principle in Part IX. Active throughout Parts VII and IX.

Proceedings Concerning Hardeep Singh Nijjar — Surry, British Columbia, June 2023

 [DA] Canadian government allegations attributing the killing to agents connected to the Government of India. Politically consequential but not adjudicatively settled in the manner of the Gupta guilty plea. Maintained as [DA] throughout. Cited in Part VIII and Finding 17.

IV. Human Rights Documentation

Human Rights Watch — Documentation on Khalra, Punjab Cremations, and CBI Inquiry

 [PF] Primary secondary source for access to CBI and Supreme Court findings. Where HRW summarises the CBI report and the Supreme Court findings, the [PF] weight derives from the underlying primary materials. Used throughout Part III and the Executive Summary.

Human Rights Watch — ‘Dead Silence: The Legacy of Abuses in Punjab’ (1994)

 [PF] Comprehensive early documentation of the Punjab counterinsurgency period’s human-rights landscape. Predates but contextualises Khalra’s investigation. Background to Part III.

Amnesty International — Documentation on Disappearances and Impunity in Punjab

 [PF] Independent institutional corroboration of the pattern Khalra exposed. Consulted as contextual background for Part III.

National Human Rights Commission — Punjab Mass-Cremation Proceedings

 [PF] Additional institutional record of official engagement with the cremation accountability questions. Reinforces the multi-institutional character of the record.

Citizens for Democracy and FIDH — Mission Reporting on Punjab

 [PF] Field-mission documentation confirming the pattern Khalra exposed was visible to multiple independent international observers. Contextual background.

V. Journalism and Reported Sources

Honey Trehan — NDTV Interview (July 2025)

 [PF] [DA] [PF] for: date of first submission (December 2022), existence of 127-cut demand, director’s public characterisation of the demands’ effect. [DA] for: precise content of specific demanded cuts. Primary journalistic source for Finding 1 and Part I.

ABP — Reporting Quoting Justice Ranjit Singh and Honey Trehan

 [PF] [DA] [PF] for: existence of the controversy. [DA] for: specific demands attributed to CBFC including removal of Punjab, Punjab Police, and Indira Gandhi references. Cited in Part I and Finding 1.

The Guardian — Reporting on CBFC Demands Regarding Udta Punjab (2016)

 [PF] Existence and general nature of 89 demanded cuts to Udta Punjab including its title. Cited in Part IV and Finding 8 as evidence of recurring toponymic censorial discomfort.

Associated Press — Nikhil Gupta Guilty Plea, Manhattan Federal Court

 [PF] Access point for the federal judicial record. [PF] weight derives from the underlying guilty plea, not merely the journalistic report. Cited in Part VIII and Finding 16.

Reporting on Dhurandhar 2 Certification — March 2026 (Multiple Outlets)

 [PF] Fact of certification, certificate category, and general nature of commercial edits. Cited throughout Part I and Appendix A.

Reporting on Sikh Community Complaints — Dhurandhar 2 Smoking Controversy (March 2026)

 [PF] [DA] [PF] for: existence of the public controversy and complaints. [DA] for: precise scene content and producer’s intent. Cited in Part VI and Findings 14–15.

Reporting on the Nijjar Case — Globe and Mail, Reuters, BBC, and Others (June 2023 Onwards)

 [DA] Canadian government allegations and diplomatic fallout. Maintained as [DA] throughout. Cited in Part VIII and Finding 17.

The Indian Express, The Caravan — Reporting on Punjab ’95 and Khalra

 [DA] Secondary corroborating journalism on the certification dispute and the Khalra historical record. Used as background; primary citations derive from Trehan’s own statements and Tier 1 judicial materials.

Scroll.in, The Wire, The Quint, The Print — CBFC and Punjab-Related Cinema Reporting

 [DA] Ongoing coverage of CBFC decisions and Punjab-related cinema controversies. Treated as [DA] for specific demands and [PF] for existence of public controversy.

VI. Films Referenced

Punjab ’95 (originally Ghalughara), dir. Honey Trehan — Colour Yellow Productions

 [PF] [DA] Primary subject of the certification analysis. First submitted December 2022; uncleared as of the date of this report. Narrative directly grounded in Tier 1 judicial materials. [PF] for certification history as publicly reported; [DA] for precise content of CBFC demands.

Dhurandhar 2 — Certified March 2026

 [PF] Primary comparative subject. Certified via standard commercial pathway. The structural contrast between its certification history and Punjab ’95’s is the foundational evidentiary fact of Part I.

Udta Punjab (2016)

 [PF] Subject of CBFC demands including title change and Punjab-reference removal. Precedent for toponymic censorial discomfort. Certified after court intervention. Part IV and Finding 8.

Toofan Singh, Punjab ’84, Saada Haq

 [PF] Films facing certification difficulties while dealing with Punjab Sikh historical experience from the perspective of community rupture rather than national-security recovery. Contextual support for the pattern argument.

The Kashmir Files, dir. Vivek Agnihotri (2022)

 [PF] Comparative example of Statutory Immunity: minimal certification friction and significant official support for a trauma narrative that validates the dominant state-security framework. The comparison concerns differential institutional treatment, not the legitimacy of Kashmiri Pandit suffering.

VII. Academic and Scholarly Sources

Joyce Pettigrew — The Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of State and Guerrilla Violence

Most comprehensive academic account of ordinary Sikh experience during the Punjab counterinsurgency. The ‘unheard voices’ framework directly resonates with the certification asymmetry analysis: administrative obstruction of historical cinema replicates, in a different register, the suppression of testimonial access.

Cynthia Mahmood — Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants

Ethnographic depth on Sikh religious identity, political mobilisation, and the experience of state violence. Contextual grounding for the analysis of how Sikh identity functions differently in different cinematic and political registers.

Monika Mehta — Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema

Historical analysis of CBFC certification patterns and their relationship to structures of political and social power. Documents patterns by which administrative censorship has tracked political comfort rather than content-neutral criteria. Conceptual grounding for the governance analysis.

Arvind Rajagopal — Politics After Television

Analysis of how visual media reshapes political publics in India. Theoretical grounding for the observation that certification authority is memory-management authority at mass scale.

Ravi Vasudevan — The Melodramatic Public

Analysis of Indian cinema’s affective and political dimensions. Supports the observation that film certification determines the emotional register in which history is made available to mass audiences.

Jeffrey K. Olick — The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility

Theoretical framework for the argument that states selectively archive historical trauma. The concept of selective archiving — granting some traumas national visibility while keeping others administratively fragmented — underlies the Villainy Gap’s structural logic.

Pierre Nora — ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’

Cinema as a site of memory: a medium through which communities encounter and transmit experience not yet fixed in official historical narrative. Relevant to the argument that certification obstruction is memory-management at institutional scale.

Paul R. Brass — The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India

Structural analysis of how institutional cultures produce systematically asymmetric outcomes without requiring explicit direction. Reinforces the structural rather than intentional framing of the Villainy Gap.

Robin Jeffrey — What’s Happening to India?

Political analysis of the Punjab crisis and its implications for federalism, centre-state relations, and minority political identity. Historical and political grounding for the contextual sections.

Scholarship on Transitional Justice, Collective Memory, and State Narrative Control

The broader transitional justice literature’s insight that states with incomplete reckonings tend toward cultural narrative management as a substitute for formal accountability. Underpins the argument that CBFC treatment of Punjab ’95 is structurally consistent with patterns of incomplete institutional accountability, not merely an anomalous bureaucratic episode.

VIII. Comparative and Contextual References

German Transitional Justice — Erinnerungskultur

 [AI] Comparative model of state-structured acknowledgment rather than suppression of historical institutional crimes. Used to establish the conceptual possibility of a different relationship between the state and historical cinema. [AI] inference about the Indian contrast.

Turkish State and Contested Historical Memory

 [AI] Comparative example of managing unresolved histories through administrative constraint rather than open prohibition. Illustrates the proposition that modern states rarely suppress historical memory through explicit bans.

Chinese Cinema Governance

 [AI] Most explicit contemporary example of cinema certification as political legitimacy management. Used to situate India’s approach on a spectrum, observing that India’s ambiguity — constitutional language with selective restriction — is a distinct variant of the same structural pressure.

IX. Companion Document

The Asymmetric Lens: A Forensic Audit of Selective Censorship in Indian Cinema (2022–2026) — kpsgill.com

Companion document to this report. Develops the institutional architecture analysis, the Statutory Immunity concept, the Institutional Paralysis pattern, and the Civilian Shield framework. The present report builds directly on that analytical foundation, narrowing its focus to the Dhurandhar/Punjab ’95 comparison and formalising the constitutional argument. All claims in this report that draw on The Asymmetric Lens are independently supported by primary sources in this bibliography.

END OF EVIDENTIARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

kpsgill.com — Forensic Audit Series — March 2026