On 19 June 2020, the investigative journalist Shubham Mani Tripathi, local correspondent for the Hindi-language daily Kampu Mail, was gunned down by a suspected business actor likely for reporting on land expropriations linked to sand mafia in Lucknow, India. In a recent Facebook post, he said he feared he could be killed because of his investigations into land expropriations of questionable legality linked to illegal sand mining. Tripathi wrote on Facebook that an illegal construction by ‘famous land mafia’ had been demolished due to a report he had filed and said the mafia was angered by this action and had registered a fake application against him to the district magistrate.