Feroz Aslam, blinded a decade ago by shotgun pellets fired during an antigovernment protest in Sopore, wants the makers of an upcoming Bollywood film to experience blindness firsthand. "Then they'll understand what blindness means," he told Al Jazeera, responding to a teaser for Chauhaan that describes pellet guns as capable of only "limited damage" Al Jazeera.

Chauhaan, produced by Jio Studios and Colour Yellow Productions and directed by Neeraj Yadav, is set for October 2027 release Deadline. It stars Ajay Devgn as an Indian security official confronting stone-throwing protesters in Kashmir—a subject that sits at the center of one of India's most disputed security decisions: the response to the 2016 unrest in the region.

The teaser's final moment has drawn sharp criticism: Devgn's character, wearing a skull mask, walks toward a crowd of protesters while a boombox plays the 1990s Bollywood song "Jumma chumma de de." Critics argue this pairing trivializes an event that caused lasting physical harm across the Kashmir Valley. The Quint, an Indian digital news outlet, published an opinion piece on July 5 titled "Ajay Devgn's Chauhaan Turns Kashmir's Trauma Into Propaganda," claiming the film frames a well-documented pattern of mass injury as entertainment The Quint.

Indian security forces began using pellet guns in Kashmir in 2010, marketed as a "non-lethal" substitute for live bullets when dispersing crowds throwing stones. Their use increased sharply after July 8, 2016, when Indian security forces killed Burhan Wani, a 22-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen commander, in Bundoora village in Anantnag district Al Jazeera. Wani's death triggered months of street protests across the Valley. The pellet-firing shotguns deployed to manage them have caused documented injury: more than 1,000 Kashmiris have lost sight—partially or completely—since 2010, according to figures cited by Al Jazeera.

The pellet-gun debate has never fully left Indian public discussion, but Bollywood has seldom addressed it directly in mainstream commercial cinema until now. Since 2019, Bollywood films set in Kashmir have tended to align with the security establishment's view of the conflict, and Chauhaan follows that pattern. What makes this case distinct is the precision of the complaint: survivors are not objecting to the film's overall politics but to one specific claim—that the weapon that cost them their sight caused only "limited damage."

That language matters because it conflicts with the medical and documentary record. Ophthalmologists in Srinagar and human rights organizations have documented pellet-gun injuries over more than a decade. They include complete and partial blindness, shrapnel lodged in the eye requiring multiple surgeries, and chronic pain—outcomes that survivors and their advocates say cannot fit the word "limited." Aslam's blinding during a protest ten years ago is one example within a larger, thoroughly documented group of victims. His objection is not about letting filmmakers take creative liberties; it is about a script line that appears to downplay an injury he manages every single day.

A familiar tension surfaces here: commercial cinema often compresses a security-forces narrative into a single heroic character, while the actual conflict on the ground is far more complicated and contested. Films centered on individual security personnel facing protesters typically present the protester side as a faceless, dangerous mass. This framing leaves little room for the specific, individually documented injuries that pellet victims have spent years trying to get recognized in Indian courts, legislative hearings, and international investigations. The skull-mask image paired with an upbeat Bollywood song reads to critics as a celebration of that confrontation rather than a serious examination of it.

Whether Chauhaan will revise or soften the "limited damage" line before its 2027 release remains unanswered—the production has not responded publicly to the backlash. With more than a year until release, the filmmakers have time to address the criticism, re-edit the teaser, or proceed unchanged. Past Bollywood productions accused of taking a one-sided political stance on Kashmir have had mixed results: some have made quiet changes, others have released unchanged. What is unlikely to shift is the fundamental disagreement: between a state security narrative that has long presented pellet guns as a restrained, non-lethal tool and a community of survivors whose own bodies contradict that claim.