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...

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.

They did so after forensics determined that Singh died from “copious blood loss.” The forensic report found he “most likely” would have survived if he had received prompt medical care, the prosecutors' statement said.

But an ambulance apparently wasn't called right away after Singh's arm was wrenched off when it got stuck in a nylon-wrapping machine...

“At the present time, therefore, it must be held that the decision to omit the necessary care constituted acceptance of the risk of the lethal event and united the cause that directly resulted in death,” the statement said....