Italian landowner arrested after Indian worker bled to death in farm equipment accident

ROME – Italian police arrested a farm owner on suspicion of murder on Tuesday after one of his workers, an illegal laborer from India, bled to death when a farm tool severed his arm. The landowner abandoned the bleeding worker and did not call an ambulance, prosecutors said.

Satnam Singh’s death has shocked Italians and sparked protests by unions and farm workers demanding better working conditions and an end to the exploitative “caporalato” system that uses underpaid migrant workers in Italy’s agricultural industry.

Even President Sergio Mattarella commented on the case, pointing to what he called the “cruel” exploitation of workers like Singh and the “inhuman” conditions in which seasonal workers often work in Italy.

Carabinieri police in Latina, an agricultural province south of Rome, arrested farm owner Antonello Lovato after prosecutors upgraded the initial suspicion of manslaughter to manslaughter “with malicious intent,” the Latina prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

They did so after the medical examiner’s office determined that Singh died of “excessive blood loss.” The medical examiner’s report concluded that he “most likely” would have survived if he had received prompt medical attention, prosecutors said in the statement.

But apparently an ambulance was not called immediately after Singh’s arm was torn off because it got caught in a nylon winding machine.

Italian daily Corriere della Sera quoted the arrest warrant signed by Judge Giuseppe Molfese, which said Lovato drove the tractor that pulled the nylon packaging machine and then left the bleeding Singh outside his house.

Italian news reports reported witnesses saying Lovato refused requests from Singh’s wife, who also worked on the farm, to call an ambulance, saying he was already dead.

State broadcaster RAI interviewed a neighbor who eventually called an ambulance. Singh was taken to San Camillo Hospital in Rome, where he was pronounced dead about two days later.

In their statement, Latina prosecutors said Singh’s condition after the injury was so serious that he clearly needed immediate medical attention.

“It must therefore be assumed at this stage that the decision not to provide the necessary care represented an acceptance of the risk of a fatal event and did not take into account the cause that immediately led to death,” the statement said.

There was no immediate response to an email seeking comment from the law firms of Stefano Perotti and Valerio Righi, identified by RAI as Lovato’s lawyers.

RAI quoted Lovato’s father Renzo as saying Singh had been warned not to get so close to the equipment. He said Singh had “taken the warning too lightly” and his attitude “will cost everyone dearly”.

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