Dead severed-arm farm hand's boss arrested

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 2 - Police on Tuesday arrested the owner of an agricultural company that employed Satnam Singh, an off-the-books 31-year-old farm labourer who bled out after being dumped outside his hut with an arm severed by wrapping machinery placed beside him on a fruit picking box at Latina south of Rome last month.
    The alleged gangmaster, Antonello Lovato, was arrested on suspicion of causing Singh's manslaughter death.
    Prosecutors said in a statement that Singh, who died of a massive haemorrghage in a Rome hospital, "would in all likelihood have been saved if he had been promptly assisted".
    The president of the Lazio Indian community, Gurmukh Singh, said "we weer waiting for this news, we were angry." He said "the worst thing (Lovato) did was to leave him outside his home instead of taking him to hospital.
    "An accident can happen, but not calling for medical assistance is unacceptable." Singh's horrific death has spurred calls for action to stamp out gangmastering in Italy.
    The death of Singh, one of the thousands of Indian immigrants who work the fields around Latina for slave wages and in dire conditions, beset by gangmasters, has caused outrage across the country.
    Opposition 5-Star Movement (M5S) leader Giuseppe Conte was among those urging Premier Giorgia Meloni to act to root out the sometimes brutal exploitation of mainly immigrant farm workers.
    Conte, a former two-time premier with contrasting administrations, said he expected "words and strong stances from Meloni".
    He wrote on X: "You lose your arm while you're working in the fields for four euros an hour. You're not immediately treated.
    They put you in a van and they dump you like rubbish outside your home. Beside you, a strawberry basket in which your severed arm is left. You bleed out and die.
    "It sounds like the story of a slave centuries ago. We can't close our eyes, we can't think about making profits while cancelling the dignity of work and the last shreds of humanity.
    "If we ignore these atrocities, we will stop defending Italy and its values.
    "We are ready to do our bit in parliament against these barbarities, which must be rooted out of the fields all over Italy".
    Meloni subseuquently said Singh was the victim of "inhuman acts." But her brother in law, and bigwig in her rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, warned against tarring all farmers with the same brush.
    Lollobrigida said Singh had been killed by "a criminal".
    Speaking at a press conference with Labour Minister Marina Calderone after talks on Singh's death and gangmastering with unions and employers, Lollobrigida said: "In these situations it can happen that there is a criminalisation of one of the links in the chain.
    "It can happen, therefore, that when faced with serious episodes like the one at Latina, all the agricultural enterprises are criminalised.
    "These deaths aren't the fault of agricultural entrepreneurs.
    "They are the fault of criminals".
    Gangmastering and the often violent exploitation of migrant farm labourers is a chronic problem in Italy, especially in the south.
    Latina hosts thousands of immigrant labourers, many of them Sikhs, working picking fruit and vegetables for the local 'agro-mafia' as well as legitimate firms. (ANSA).