NEW DELHI — They came in the heat of the late afternoon, two cars jammed with enforcers and police officers allied with a local dairy minister. They charged into the reporter’s house and reminded him that he had been warned many times that “he should not write anything against the minister.”

At least that’s what the reporter, Jagendra Singh, told a police official on his deathbed, with 60 percent of his body covered with burns after, he said, the men doused him with gasoline and set him on fire.

It was payback, he said, for his many posts on social media linking Ram Murti Verma, the minister of dairy development in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, to illegal sand mining and taking possession of unoccupied land, two underground activities rampant in the state.

“They warned him that they will not leave his fingers in such a state that they would be able to write anything against the minister,” said Mr. Singh’s son, Rahul, in a telephone interview on Thursday.