Indian killed in Salerno, Court of Appeal orders prison for fellow countryman

The Court of Appeal of Salerno accepted the appeal of the Salerno Prosecutor's Office against the order of the investigating judge rejecting the request for precautionary measures against SD, a 37-year-old Indian held responsible for the murder of a fellow countryman that occurred in early 2022 in Contursi Terme. Accepting the appeal, the Review Court of Salerno he ordered the precautionary detention in prison, a measure which cannot be enforced due to the time limit for its possible appeal before the Court of Cassation.

The investigations coordinated by the Salerno Public Prosecutor's Office began with the discovery, on 8 February 2022, of human remains in a rural area of Contursi Terme, in the Palomonte area, in an uncultivated field not far from the provincial road 10/A. The victim, before being killed, had been brutally beaten, in fact numerous fractures were found to the nasal septum, the jaw, the right tibia, then disemboweled and decapitated.

The deceased was identified, through genetic analysis carried out on DNA evidence, as Gurinder Singh, a farm worker of Indian origin, legally resident in Italy since 2011 and moved to Campania in August 2021, when he was hired by a buffalo company a few kilometers away from where the body was found. According to the reconstruction of the investigations, Singh was killed following personal disagreements that arose with the suspect.

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The two lived in a small prefabricated building of a few square meters made available by the employer. The identification of SD as the suspected perpetrator of the murder was reached following investigations carried out by the forensic police, which allowed them to find traces of blood, compatible with the genetic profile of the victim, inside the suspect's car, on some of his clothes, and finally inside the prefabricated building itself, which, after the victim's disappearance, had been inhabited exclusively by the 37-year-old.

However, the investigating judge highlighted gaps in the investigations, such as, in particular, the failure to use the “Bloodstain Pattern Analysis” technique (i.e. the scientific analysis of the trajectories of blood spatters), and had deemed the blood traces insufficient. The preliminary investigation judge, considering in particular “highly symptomatic” the circumstance of the suspect’s departure, which occurred suddenly, with an airline ticket for an intercontinental flight purchased a few hours before the trip, without any warning, and without any baggage being checked in, reached conclusions opposite to those of the investigating judge.