Vickrum Digwa, 23, will spend at least 21 years behind bars after a judge at Southampton Crown Court condemned him for killing an unarmed university student with a ceremonial Sikh dagger, then lying about it, fabricating a racial abuse claim, and conspiring with family members to cover up the crime.
Henry Nowak was 18 years old, an accountancy student walking home alone after a night out in the Portswood area of Southampton last December. He never made it back. Instead, he bled to death on the street, handcuffed by police who believed his attacker’s story over his own dying words.
Judge William Mousley KC handed down the life sentence on Monday, dismantling Digwa’s defense in a detailed sentencing statement that called the killer’s account a collection of “wicked lies.” The judge made clear that Nowak had said nothing racist, that the encounter was a chance meeting on a sidewalk, and that Digwa had abused a religious privilege extended to Sikhs to carry a blade in public.
Judge Mousley reconstructed the final minutes of Nowak’s life in court. The student had consumed a small amount of alcohol over the previous few hours. He was not drunk. He was alone and unarmed, walking back to his university accommodation.
Digwa was walking south along Belmont Road on the same pavement. He was sober. He carried a large Sikh dagger in a sheath attached to a belt over the outside of his clothing.
Digwa later claimed Nowak deliberately barged into him. The judge rejected that outright.
“I am sure that was one of the many lies you have told and repeated since it happened.”
What happened next was swift and fatal. Judge Mousley described how Digwa drew the dagger from its sheath and deliberately stabbed Nowak in the chest. The blade passed upward through soft tissue, between the two uppermost ribs, catching a lung and cutting an important vein behind the collarbone. Blood flowed into Nowak’s chest cavity. He was stabbed multiple times, wounds to his face, groin, and the backs of his legs.
Nowak tried to escape. Members of Digwa’s family arrived and detained him.
What followed compounds the horror. When police arrived, they were told Digwa’s version of events, that Nowak had racially abused him. Officers arrested Nowak for assault and handcuffed the bleeding teenager.
Nowak protested. He told officers he had been stabbed and was dying. One officer’s response, as recounted by Nowak’s father Mark on the court steps after sentencing: “I don’t think you have mate.”
By the time Nowak lost consciousness, nobody had believed him. Police attempted CPR, but it was too late. He died on the street in handcuffs, under arrest for a crime he did not commit, while his actual killer was treated as the victim.
Mark Nowak’s words outside the courthouse were measured but devastating. He said his family holds Digwa “solely and 100 per cent responsible for the brutal murder of our son.” But he did not spare the police.
“He told them he had been stabbed four times. The response from one officer was ‘I don’t think you have mate’. The police say they had been misled. Instead of being treated like a dying victim, police arrested him for assault… Henry did not die with dignity. He did not die with the care he deserved. He lost consciousness before anyone believed him.”
Henry Nowak, the father said, should “not have died on the streets of Southampton in police custody. The way he was treated was inhumane and degrading.”
Digwa’s deception did not end at the scene. After Nowak died, Digwa was taken to a police station, but was not arrested. His mother, Kiran Kaur, removed the weapon from the crime scene and hid it at the family home.
The contrast in treatment was not lost on the Nowak family. Mark Nowak pointed out that Digwa “was believed. He was not handcuffed when arrested. He was not handcuffed when transported to the police station. As far as we understand, he was never handcuffed at all.” While under arrest for Henry’s murder, Nowak’s father said, police even took Digwa to the kitchen so he could choose his food.
“The contrast is unbearable.”
But it was a secretly recorded conversation that sealed Digwa’s fate. Judge Mousley revealed that police recorded Digwa and his brother Gurpreet speaking in Punjabi during the journey to the station. In that conversation, the two agreed to pretend Digwa had acted in self-defense, even though Digwa confessed to stabbing Nowak three times, including once to the chest with the dagger.
The judge quoted Digwa’s own words back at him: if there were cameras on that part of Belmont Road, he would be unable to put forward self-defense. He knew he was guilty. He decided to try to cover it up.
Central to Digwa’s defense was the assertion that Nowak had called him a racial slur. The judge demolished that claim without ambiguity.
“Henry had said nothing racist. You are the only person to make that claim and it is completely at odds with his previous character… Your actions have stirred up racial tension… you abused the privilege extended to Sikhs to have a knife in a public place for religious reasons, dishonoured your religion and have now put others at risk of repercussions.”
That final line from Judge Mousley deserves attention. The fabricated racial abuse claim did not exist in a vacuum. It shaped how police responded at the scene. It determined who got handcuffed and who got believed. And as the judge noted, it stirred racial tension in a community that now must live with the consequences of one man’s lies.
The Sikh religious exemption allowing the carrying of a kirpan, a ceremonial blade, in public exists because of trust between a religious community and the state. Digwa exploited that trust, weaponized a blade meant for devotion, and then hid behind a false accusation of racism to justify it. The judge said plainly that Digwa had “dishonoured” his religion and put other Sikhs at risk of repercussions.
Kiran Kaur, Digwa’s mother, was found guilty of assisting an offender after she removed the murder weapon from the scene and concealed it at the family home. She is scheduled to be sentenced on July 17th, with the delay allowing preparation of a pre-sentencing report.
Her conviction underscores the family-wide effort to shield Digwa from accountability. The brother conspired on a cover story. The mother hid the weapon. The false racial abuse narrative was deployed at the scene to redirect police attention.
Police have previously apologized for handcuffing Nowak. They have also pointed to testimony from a pathologist who said emergency treatment could not have prevented the bleeding from the internal wound. That may be medically accurate. But it does not address the core failure: an 18-year-old told officers he was dying, and they did not believe him.
Mark Nowak called on the government to give the investigation into police behavior “the resources, authority and independence it needs.” He said his family “should not have to fight for the truth anymore.”
The open questions are significant. Which police force handled the incident? What is the scope and status of the investigation into the officers’ conduct? Was any disciplinary action taken against the officer who dismissed a dying teenager’s plea? The sentencing resolved Digwa’s criminal liability. It did not resolve the institutional failures that let Henry Nowak die in handcuffs.
Step back from the courtroom and look at what happened on Belmont Road that night in December. A young man walking home alone was attacked without provocation by a stranger carrying a large blade. The attacker’s family arrived, detained the victim, and told police a story that cast the bleeding teenager as the aggressor. Police believed the story. They arrested the victim. They handcuffed him. They dismissed his pleas. He died.
The attacker, meanwhile, was not handcuffed. Was not arrested at the scene. Was driven to a station where he was allowed to pick his own food. His mother removed the murder weapon. His brother helped him rehearse a cover story. And the false claim of racial abuse, the lie that inverted victim and perpetrator in the eyes of responding officers, went unchallenged until the secretly recorded conversation exposed the truth.
Every incentive in that sequence rewarded the liar and punished the victim. The racial abuse claim functioned as a shield, and the officers on scene accepted it at face value. Whether that acceptance reflected training, policy, fear of being accused of insensitivity, or simple incompetence is a question the Nowak family deserves to have answered.
Judge Mousley imposed a serious sentence. Twenty-one years before Digwa can even apply for parole. That is appropriate. But a life sentence for the killer does not give Henry Nowak’s family what they are still asking for, an honest accounting of why their son died in handcuffs while his murderer was offered a choice of meals.
When a false accusation of racism can override the dying words of a stabbing victim, something in the system has gone badly wrong. The question now is whether anyone besides the Nowak family has the courage to say so.
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