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ShowbizAuthors Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh walk away from Salman Khan's Maatrubhumi a day before its trailer launch
Defence journalists Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh have ended their association with Salman Khan's war film Maatrubhumi, saying it has moved beyond their book's account of the 2020 Galwan clash — a day before the film's four-minute-43-second trailer is unveiled.
Defence journalists Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh have ended their formal association with Salman Khan's upcoming war film Maatrubhumi, announcing the decision in a joint statement on 5 November, just a day before the film's trailer is due to be unveiled. The two writers, whose book series India's Most Fearless provided the source material for the project, said the film had moved beyond the account of the 2020 Galwan Valley clash that first brought them on board.
The announcement was made by Aroor in a post on X, where he shared the statement he had signed with his co-author. "Rahul Singh and I (Shiv Aroor) would like to share that our association with Maatrubhumi (earlier titled Battle of Galwan) has come to a close," the statement read. "As the film has evolved, it has moved beyond the account of the Galwan incident in our India's Most Fearless series that first brought us on board." The pair thanked Salman Khan, director Apoorva Lakhia and the rest of the team for the opportunity, and wished the film well.
The split is striking in its timing. Maatrubhumi: May War Rest in Peace is one of the most talked-about Hindi films of the year, and its trailer — certified at four minutes and 43 seconds, making it one of the longest trailers in Indian cinema — is set to be launched at a grand event in Mumbai on Friday, 6 November, on the festival of Dhanteras. The Central Board of Film Certification cleared the trailer with a U/A 16+ certificate on 4 November, and the launch has been built up as the film's biggest promotional moment so far.
The project began with a chapter in India's Most Fearless 3, published in 2022, in which Aroor and Singh documented the June 2020 clash between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh. That confrontation, fought hand to hand at high altitude, claimed the lives of 20 Indian soldiers, including Colonel Bikumalla Santosh Babu, whom Salman Khan portrays in the film. Director Apoorva Lakhia acquired the rights to the chapter in 2023, and Aroor was credited for the film's story alongside Suresh Nair.
When the film was first announced in July 2025, it carried the title Battle of Galwan and was presented as a direct adaptation of the book's account. The title was later changed to Maatrubhumi, a shift Lakhia has said was planned from the start, with both titles registered early in the film's development. The film, produced under Salman Khan's own banner, Salman Khan Films, follows the deadly confrontation and the soldiers who fought it, with Khan playing an Indian Army officer based on Colonel Santosh Babu.
The authors' statement does not accuse the filmmakers of any wrongdoing, and its tone is notably warm. But the reason it gives — that the film has "evolved" beyond their account — has invited questions about how much the screen version now differs from the book. A source close to the production told Indian newspaper The Indian Express that the film had not changed at all and was being made exactly as planned, describing rumours of script tweaks or re-edits as completely baseless. That account sits uneasily beside the authors' own words, and neither side has said more.
The departure also comes at the end of a noisy week for the film. Days earlier, its song "Teri Sexy Beauty", which marked Khan's return to playback singing after 11 years, divided fans and drew criticism for its tone in a film about a deadly border clash. The song's reception had already put the film's creative choices under a spotlight, and the authors' exit has now given that debate a sharper focus, with social media users asking whether the film has drifted from the solemn subject that first defined it.
For Aroor and Singh, the decision carries a professional cost as well as a public one. Aroor, an NDTV journalist and one of India's best-known defence writers, had a story credit on the film, and the India's Most Fearless series is one of the most successful non-fiction franchises in Indian publishing. Walking away from a Salman Khan-led production a day before its trailer launch is an unusual step for authors whose work is the film's foundation, and it signals that the disagreement, however politely expressed, was not a small one.
What happens next is, for now, a matter of watching the trailer itself. When it is released on Friday, audiences will get their first extended look at how Lakhia has framed the Galwan story — its scale, its tone and how closely it hews to the events of June 2020. The film's theatrical release date remains unconfirmed, with 20 November and 11 December both reportedly under consideration, and the trailer launch is expected to settle at least part of that question.
The authors' exit may ultimately be a footnote if the film succeeds on its own terms, but it is an awkward one for a project built on the credibility of its source. Maatrubhumi was sold to audiences as a true story, rooted in a book by two respected defence journalists. With those journalists now publicly stepping aside, the film will have to earn that trust on the screen alone — starting with a trailer that arrives, unusually, without its original authors standing behind it.
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