Authorities in Sicily assumed that a Bulgarian national who lived and worked in Malta and was killed in a road accident was an illegal African immigrant due to the dark colour of his skin and buried him without contacting his family, it has emerged.

The parents of 23-year-old Stoyan Zafirova, who was holidaying in Sicily, only learnt that their son had died after having been hit by a car a week after the accident occurred on a main road near the seaside town of Pozzallo on 7 June, the Sicilian press reports.

Even more distressing, they were then told that Mr Zafirova, who lived with his family in Malta, had already been buried in Sicily without their permission, after police assumed he was a “homeless African immigrant”, due to the “dark colour of his skin” and because he was not carrying any identification documents.

Newspapers in Ragusa said Mr Zafirova, a computer programmer who worked in Malta, was hit by a 50-year-old man from Pozzallo driving in a Mercedes. Despite efforts to save him, he died at the scene.

As the family set about making funeral arrangements, the Sicilian authorities said they were unable to release his body until a probe into the accident had been completed, and that travelling to the island was “pointless”, according to thelocal.it website.

Finally, six weeks later, the Zafirova family received a letter saying their son’s body was ready to be released.

But as their undertaker in Malta made plans to bring the body home, the family was reportedly shocked to learn that Mr Zafirova had been buried in a cemetery in Pozzallo 12 days earlier.

“He was buried without our permission, they didn’t inform us of anything,” the dead man’s mother, Zaharinka Zafirova, told thelocal.it.

She had spoken to her son three days before he died. “He said everything was fine, he was doing very well,” she said.

“He was staying in an apartment there, so the reports about him being homeless are untrue.”