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

ROME (AP) — Italian police arrested a farm owner on Tuesday on suspicion of homicide after one of his workers, an undocumented laborer from India, bled to death when his arm was cut off by a piece of farm equipment. The landowner abandoned the bleeding worker and failed to call an ambulance, prosecutors said.

The death of Satnam Singh has shocked Italians and sparked protests by unions and farm workers demanding better working conditions. They have called for an end to the exploitive “caporalato” system of using underpaid migrant labor to work in Italy's agriculture industry.

Even President Sergio Mattarella has weighed in on the case, referring to what he said was the “cruel” exploitation of workers like Singh and “inhuman” conditions in which seasonal farmhands often work in Italy.

Carabinieri police in Latina, a largely agricultural province south of Rome, arrested farm owner Antonello Lovato after prosecutors bumped up the original suspected crime of manslaughter to homicide with “malice afterthought,” a statement from Latina prosecutors said.