India Reporter Shubham Tripathi Killed for Sand Mafia Investigations

A correspondent based in Uttar Pradesh, in northern India, he had recently publicly expressed his fears of being murdered. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demands that the regional authorities set up an independent team to investigate and bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice.

He was shot six times, three of them in the head… Reporter Shubham Mani Tripathi died on the spot , Friday June 19, in the district of Unnao, in the suburbs of Lucknow, the capital of the State of l ‘Uttar Pradesh Correspondent in the city of Kanpur for the Hindiphonedaily Kampu Mail , Shubham Tripathi had recently expressed, notably on Facebook , his fears of being murdered because of investigations he was carrying out on cases of illegal expropriation in connection with the sand mafia.

The head of his newspaper’s local office, Ritesh Shukla , cites in particular the name of a businesswoman, Divya Awasthi, involved in land transactions. A version confirmed by the journalist’s uncle, Dhirendra Mani Tripathi, quoted by the NewsClick portal : “Divya Awasthi had taken possession of public land, and Shubham had denounced these embezzlement , he explains. Members of his militia had already attacked him at his home last year after his investigation. This time they killed him. ”

We call on the Uttar Pradesh authorities to launch an independent investigation to shed light on the atrocious murder of Shubham Tripathi ,” said Daniel Bastard, manager of RSF’s Asia-Pacific office. In this region of northern India, the links of the sponsors of the sand mafia with local police officials almost systematically lead to a classification without follow-up of the cases of journalists killed for their trade. This vicious circle of impunity must be stopped by pushing for legislation guaranteeing the safety of reporters. ”

Most dangerous state

The most populous state in India, Uttar Pradesh is also one of the most dangerous for journalists, especially those trying to investigate the sand mafia – named after illegal pillage of quarries and riverbeds in India to provide construction sand.  

In this one state alone, in 2016, two reporters from the Jansandesh Timesand Hindustan , Karun Misra and Ranjan Rajdev , were shot and killed bymotorcycle attackers after publishing articles on illegal mining activities. In June 2015, the journalist Jagendra Singh has succumbed to his injuriesafter being the victim of a police raid after which he was burned alive. He was investigating in particular the links of a minister with organized crime around illegal mines.

A few days later, Haider Khan , who had investigated improper expropriations, was beaten and dragged behind a motorcycle for a hundred meters. In October of the same year, still in Uttar Pradesh, Hemant Kumar Yadav was shot several times in the chest by men on motorbikes in retaliation for his articles. In all these cases, the investigations carried out by the police have not produced any results, and the principals remain unpunished.

Judicial harassment

Journalists attempting to do their jobs in Uttar Pradesh, when not victims of physical violence, are often subjected to judicial harassment orchestrated by the regional government of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the Prime Minister’s unwavering zealot. Federal Minister, Narendra Modi, and his Hindu nationalist policy.

The editor of the Scroll.in news site , Supriya Sharma , had the bitter experience on Thursday, June 18, after the state police registered a complaint against her and her editor , Naresh Fernandes . In question, an article devoted to the effects of confinement in remote villages in the Varanasi district, which Narendra Modi made his constituency. According to the police investigation, the two journalists, prosecuted for four reasons, face up to five years in prison.

Siddharth Varadarajan , the editor of another independent site, The Wire , is also the subject of an investigation following a complaint filed on April 1 for the dissemination of “fake news” on the chief minister of the ‘Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath, who actually participated in a large religious meeting two days after the imposition of confinement throughout India.

The country is now 142nd out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Ranking established by RSF in 2020 .

Copyright ©2016, Reporters Without Borders. Used with the permission of Reporters Without Borders(RSF), CS 90247 75083 Paris Cedex 02 https://rsf.org

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