It is the photo that will shock France.
Beaten to a pulp, dumped in a supermarket trolley and left for dead on the side of the road.
That was the fate of 16-year-old Darius, a Roma boy snatched from his family by a vigilante mob who accused him of burglary.
The teenager was in a medically induced coma on Wednesday in a Paris hospital, where doctors said it was not certain he would pull through after suffering multiple skull fractures.
President François Hollande denounced it as an “unspeakable and unjustifiable attack on all the principles on which our republic was founded”.
But critics say government policy has stigmatised France’s 20,000-strong Roma community, who mostly come from Romania and Bulgaria.
France’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, came under stinging criticism late last year when, as interior minister, he said most Roma in France had no intention of integrating and should be sent back to their countries of origin.
The issue sparked nationwide student protests in October after authorities took a 15-year-old Roma girl off a bus in front of her classmates during a school trip and deported her along with her family to Kosovo
The shocking pictures said to be of Darius were passed to The Telegraph by a man who lived next door to the squalid camp that the teenager, his family and others had set up around an abandoned house in the poor immigrant suburb of Pierrefitte, north of Paris.
The man, who does not want to be identified, said he found the boy unconscious in the trolley late last Friday, shortly after he was dragged away by a gang of around 20 men wearing balaclavas. The picture has not been verified with members of the family.
Local officials said the teenager was known to police and had been questioned a number of times this month in connection with a string of robberies but had no convictions.
The boy’s family, who had arrived in a deserted house a month ago after being evicted from another camp, fled in panic after the beating.
Sylvie Moisson, a prosecutor in charge of the case, said the attack on Darius had happened after an apartment had been broken into and items stolen.
A group had taken the boy away by force, locked him in a basement and beat him.
“The loot was just a few pieces of jewellery as the perpetrator fled once he was seen by a very young witness. (The witness) gave a description that corresponded with a young man, who was quickly hunted, kidnapped, held, beaten and left to die,” she told AFP
The attack was founded on rumours, said Moisson, who called it “an act of barbarism”. She added: “Doctors cannot yet give an opinion on the development of his health situation.”
