Laura Hardeep Kaur was in her office when she received a photo via WhatsApp of a severed arm placed in a crate used for collecting fruit and vegetables.
The trade unionist was horrified but didn’t hesitate to get into her car and drive to an address 20 minutes away in Castelverde, a hamlet in the province of Latina, about 30 miles from Rome.
Kaur described a scene she said she would never forget. Medics were trying to stabilise Satnam Singh, a 31-year-old labourer from India, who was bleeding profusely after being crushed by a machine on the farm where he had been working. He had lost his right arm in the accident and suffered injuries to his legs.
Instead of taking Satnam to hospital, his employer, Antonello Lovato, allegedly left him on the street outside his home, his arm in the black crate beside him, and fled, ignoring pleas for help from Satnam’s partner.
Satnam was transported by air ambulance to a hospital in Rome, where he died two days later. Medics said if he had been taken to hospital straight away, he would probably have survived. Lovato was arrested this month on charges of murder.
“Satnam was dumped as if he was a commodity,” Kaur, who is general secretary of the Frosinone-Latina branch of the agriculture workers’ union Flai-Cgil, told the Observer.
“I have come across plenty of tragic cases among farm labourers here… there are workers who have been beaten by their employers and reduced to slavery. There have been suicides. But until Satnam, I had never...
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