«He couldn’t have left me, I only had him. Why didn’t he take us to the hospital? »

He had a name, his name was Satnam Singh, 31 years old and a story. He had decided to leave India with his young wife, little more than a child, not to chase a dream – there is no room for rhetoric here – but to live a little better. “Navi”, as he called himself in Italy, died yesterday morning at the San Camillo hospital in Rome. An atrocious death, an arm torn off by a machine used in the fields. He had been working for 12 hours when it happened, he had started work in the fields at 5 in the morning, that damned roller mutilated him shortly after four in the afternoon. Twelve hours, paid 5 euros an hour. But the atrocity of a very serious accident at work then merged with the horror: he was loaded onto his van by the agricultural entrepreneur for whom he had been working for two years, with the limb resting on a plastic box used for vegetables and the desperate screams of his wife. Abandoned on the doorstep a handful of kilometers away, from the Latina company, Borgo Santa Maria, to the neighboring neighborhood of Sant’Ilario a Cisterna. “Navi” was strong, but his body was not enough to withstand those fatal wounds, that blood lost between the fields and the van, the devastating force of the plastic wrapping machine pulled by the tractor that severed his right arm and crushed his lower limbs .

THE RECONSTRUCTION

Satnam Singh was an immigrant who arrived in Italy with his 26-year-old wife Soni three years ago. They call them invisible, but invisible they are not, they have life, history and affections, they carry on the work in thousands of companies, yet “Navi” was treated as if he were not a man, even on the verge of death: wounds to hide, a injury to be denied, a drama to be made invisible. But he was without an arm and almost lifeless, he couldn’t disappear even in the face of the fear of being reported for exploitation of clandestine labor.
The Carabinieri of the Latina command are investigating the accident coordinated by the deputy prosecutor Marina Marra. The case initially opened for negligent injury, failure to provide aid and violation of the provisions on irregular work will be transformed, with the death of the worker, into manslaughter paid by the entrepreneur Antonello Lovato, 38 years old. His lawyers, Valerio Righi and Stefano Perotti, underline that “no communication has yet arrived from the Prosecutor’s Office” and add that their client is desperate, who told what happened in his company on Monday, holding his head in his hands and explaining to the police that he no longer understood anything, so upset that shortly after he presented himself to the police accompanied by his lawyers. Now the investigators are awaiting the outcome of the autopsy, to assign responsibility and to understand whether Navi could have been saved.

THE REACTIONS

Yesterday morning at San Camillo the screams of Soni, small, alone and desperate, resounded, together with Stefano Morea, secretary of Flai Cgil Roma Lazio, and Laura Hardeep Kaur, secretary of Flai Cgil Frosinone-Latina, with them a man and a woman of Indians who live in the area where the couple lived. “We are trying to build a minimum social network around her – says Morea – they will not leave her alone in these terrible hours, she has not yet realized Navi’s death”. She screams and repeats: «It was all blood, it was full of blood, I understood that we were going to the hospital, but instead she left us at home. We had to go to the hospital, why didn’t they take us? But Navi isn’t dead, you can’t die, I only have you – she shouts desperately at her husband’s bedside – it’s just the two of us, you can’t leave me ». She is desperate, theirs was a life in absolute communion, always together, at work and at home, a small and dilapidated house, a better life never came.

THE INVESTIGATIONS

Now the investigators are evaluating the possibility of arrest, awaiting the results of the autopsy and the testimonies to allow the Prosecutor’s Office to make a summary. Meanwhile, Flai CGIL has requested a residence permit for Soni for reasons of justice. A death accompanied by pain and anger, the words of the Minister of Labor Marina Calderone were very harsh: «The one committed in Latina is an act of barbarism and incivility, perpetrated against a person in very serious physical conditions and in immediate danger of his life». The Lazio Region has announced that it will be a civil party in the trial against those responsible and will pay for the funeral, meanwhile the mayor of Latina, Matilde Celentano, has called for city mourning.

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