Rajkummar Rao’s Shahid finds a streaming home after 13 years; Apurva Asrani asks ‘why now?’

“He was murdered for that courage,” added Asrani.

He then addressed the years-long speculation around why Shahid hasn’t seen light of the day on streaming for all these years. “It was released a year before 2014. Then came a political climate in which dissenters, activists, journalists and those defending the rights of the accused increasingly found themselves under suspicion,” argued Asrani.

He quoted the instance of former student leader Umar Khalid, who was detained by the Delhi Police in the 2016 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) sedition row. He was re-arrested in 2020 following his alleged involvement in the 2020 Delhi riots. He’s been in Tihar Jail since then, and has been repeatedly denied bail, although his trial hasn’t started yet.

Asrani argued the larger political climate also creeped into the film industry. “Many of us — filmmakers, actors, and writers drawn to courageous stories like Shahid — either struggled to get such ideas made or were co-opted by the system into telling ‘kosher’ stories that won National Awards thanks to their political conformity and despite their mediocrity,” claimed the writer.

Shahid writer asks ‘Why now?’

“So, why now? Why does a film like Shahid finally find a streaming platform in 2026? Has the mood changed? Is there growing resistance to the politics of fear? Whatever the reason, I’m proud of this film. It established me as a co-writer/editor and brought me back to the kind of cinema I believe in. Watch it if you haven’t. Watch it again if you have,” wrote Asrani.

He hailed the team of Shahid as “wonderful” and the film a “reminder of the kind of courageous cinema we used to make and celebrate”. Asrani ended his tweet by thanking and tagging Prime Video India with a fist up emoji. The movie, co-produced by Anurag Kashyap, Ronnie Screwvala, and Siddharth Roy Kapur, also starred Kay Kay Menon, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Shalini Vatsa, and Vipin Sharma among others.

Also Read — Riz Ahmed on beating Fahadh Faasil, Vir Das to Digger role: ‘Hope we get to work together’

Shahid also marked a turn in the career of Hansal Mehta, who began making more thought-provoking, socially relevant films like that. It also marked the start of his long-standing collaboration with Rajkummar, which continued with CityLights (2014), Aligarh (2015), Omerta (2017), Chhalaang (2020), and the ALT Balaji period show Bose: Dead/Alive.