Employer arrested for Indian farm worker’s death in Italy

ROME: Italian police have arrested the owner of the agriculture company who dumped a 31-year-old Indian worker on the road without medical assistance after his arm was severed by heavy farm machinery, causing his death, a tragic incident that shocked the country and its leadership.

Satnam Singh was abandoned by his employer after a strawberry wrapping machine severed his arm in Lazio, near Rome, last month and died due to “copious bleeding”, the ANSA news agency reported.

The Sikh casual farm labourer died in a hospital in Rome two days later after being airlifted there when he was eventually found.

Police on Tuesday arrested the alleged gang master, Antonello Lovato, on suspicion of causing Singh’s manslaughter death, the report said.

Prosecutors said in a statement that the Sikh farmer, who died of a massive haemorrhage in a Rome hospital, “would in all likelihood have been saved if he had been promptly assisted”.

“We were waiting for this news, we were angry,” the president of the Lazio Indian community, Gurmukh Singh, said.

“The worst thing (Lovato) did was to leave him outside his home instead of taking him to hospital,” he was quoted as saying.

“An accident can happen, but not calling for medical assistance is unacceptable,” he said.

Singh’s death has spurred outrage at gang mastering, which is widespread in Italy, especially in the south of the country, and modern forms of slavery.

According to an earlier report, Lovato loaded Singh and his wife into a van and left them by the side of the road near their home.