Henry Nowak's family called for his murder not to be used to stoke division, tension or race hate. Yet far right activists and politicians in and outside the UK have cynically done just that. Such politicisation is hard to avoid but no less reprehensible for it. If your thoughts really are "with the family of the victim" then listen to Henry's family's wishes and stop using his tragic death to fuel a culture war. Trigger warning: violence and distressing content.
By: Oliver Daddow | Published: Jun 09, 2026
Henry Nowak, an 18-year old first-year student at Southampton University, was stabbed several times following an altercation in the Portswood area of the city, shortly after 11pm on 3 December 2025. Henry had been on a night out and had consumed just a few drinks – his blood alcohol level was under the legal limit for driving. He was walking home alone, was unarmed and was not looking for trouble. Henry was described by the trial Judge, William Mousley, as “careful and principled, full of humour, warmth and promise… He would have been expected to live a long, hopefully, happy and fulfilling life.” (Unless otherwise hyperlinked, all quotes below are from Mousley’s sentencing remarks). Henry’s murderer was Vickrum Digwa, who was 22 at the time he stabbed Henry following a brief, chance “interaction” close to Henry’s hall of residence and Digwa’s family home. Digwa was sober but carrying two kirpan knives (one smaller, the other larger and sheathed), as is the practice among some members of Sikhism’s Nihang (warrior) order.
After an exchange of words between the two on the street corner, there was a quarrel which quickly turned physical. The precise details of the dispute are only known to Henry and his assailant. During the struggle, Digwa unsheathed the larger kirpan and deliberately stabbed Henry in the chest with it, catching his lung and an important vein behind the collar bone. Digwa also stabbed Henry twice in the upper leg and in the lower abdomen/groin area. There was a slash mark to Henry’s face, although the judge was unable to determine whether that was aimed or intended. Sentencing Digwa to Life Imprisonment, to serve a minimum term of 21 years, Judge Mousley pointed out that it was under UK law Digwa was permitted to carry the kirpans because they are part of religious observance and a popular expression of cultural identity. They are never, however, to be used for offensive purposes, other than in exceptional circumstances such as self-defence. Ultimately, therefore, Henry was the defenceless victim of a savage, unprovoked attack. There was no premeditation, said the Judge, but “I am sure that you intended to kill in the moments before you stabbed Henry.”
By the time the police arrived, harrowing, bloody bodycam footage – released after the trial at the request of Henry’s family – Henry was already lying on the ground bleeding and largely incapacitated. In the interim, Digwa had been filming Henry as he lay on the ground, doing nothing to help him and further stripping the dying teenager of dignity. Henry, clearly in acute pain and distress, quietly tells the police, several times: “I can’t breathe” and that he had been stabbed. Digwa, meanwhile, repeatedly lies to other officers as they tried to fathom what had occurred. Crucially, Digwa told them Henry had racially abused him and that Henry had not been stabbed. “I am sure”, the judge said, “that Henry had said nothing racist. You [Digwa] are the only person to make that claim and it is completely at odds with his previous character.” Instead, acting on this false information, the police gave Henry a cursory check and handcuffed him as the suspect, before officers realised he was severely injured and finally administered first aid. The pathologist later found that no amount of assistance at the scene or in hospital could have prevented the deepest stab wound from ending Henry’s life.
To play the innocent victim, Digwa encouraged the attending officers to the honest belief “that there were reasonable grounds for suspecting Henry had committed an offence”. However, it is evident that, above and beyond Digwa’s aggravating role in selling them a false narrative, the four Hampshire and Isle of Wight officers who attended the scene have some very serious questions to answer about their conduct that night. One, in fact, has already resigned. Following the conclusion of criminal proceedings in June 2026, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) launched an investigation into the police’s handling of Henry’ s final minutes. To give some important context, Judge Mousley pointed out that Digwa’s lies muddied the waters and made the officers’ job significantly harder by feeding a powerful background narrative that, sometimes, criminals will feign injury to avoid arrest or handcuffing. “It is the experience of the criminal courts that sometimes, someone arrested and handcuffed will feign injury in the hope they may be released. These police officers were faced with having to make quick decisions in pressurised circumstances about the best way to act”. On being told by Henry that he had been stabbed, one of the officers attending to Henry is heard, rather offhandedly, telling him “I don’t think you have mate”, before handcuffing him. That decision will likely be a core focus for the IOPC.
Digwa told lie upon lie to evade suspicion. He lied to the police at the scene, as did his brother, and in police custody. Nor did Digwa offer up a vital piece of evidence in the form of Henry’s mobile phone, on which Henry had filmed the early portions of their altercation. The handset was found about Digwa’s person in police custody. Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, was equally complicit in making the police’s job harder: at the scene Digwa gave her the murder weapon to hide. It was later found in their house with around 20 other such weapons. Kaur has been found guilty of assisting an offender and will be sentenced on 17 July 2026. The only family member to try to help Henry was Digwa’s father but by then it was already too late. In other words, the Judge concluded, Digwa (with the help of his family) was “obstructing the course of justice” from beginning to end. Given the Judge’s assessment, and what we know now about the case at the conclusion of criminal proceedings, the IOPC investigation will need to be thorough, fine-grained and handled with great sensitivity.
The public has every right to be concerned about the police’s handling of Henry Nowak’s murder, yet the abrupt politicisation of Henry’s death has taken on a dangerous momentum all of its own. In the immediate aftermath, there were protests and riots in the city, with police officers injured and multiple arrests as crowds gathered near the scene of the murder. Politicians across the board have also leapt on the case to make capital out of it. There have been some calls for calm and to let the IOPC investigate in peace, but the loudest voices have been those of Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, who, playing judge, jury and executioner, interpreted police actions as evidence of two-tier policing in a “two-tier Britain”. In this rendering, as Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp put it, the “police appeared more concerned with the accusation of racism… than they were with helping Henry”. There has, resultingly, been widespread scapegoating of the Sikh community, a torrent of misinformation, and performative outrage fuelled by far right activists across social media, centring on a ‘white lives matter’ narrative. Across the Atlantic, US Vice President J.D. Vance repeated Farage’s claims about the UK’s “two-tier policing” and claimed Henry would still be alive “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”
The overwhelming politicisation of Henry Nowak’s murder into an issue of ethnicity, religion and immigration directly contravenes the observations of the sentencing Judge, who observed that Digwa had disgraced the Sikh religion but did not in any way represent it. Unfortunately, though, “Your actions have stirred up racial tension in Southampton and across the country which have made many Sikhs worried about their own safety even though they have done absolutely nothing wrong.” On the steps of the court after Digwa’s sentencing Henry’s family was adamant that it did not want Henry’s murder to be exploited in this fashion. His father, Mark Nowak, could not have been clearer: “We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension”. As usual, the wishes of victims have been completely ignored, their need for space and time to grieve for a murdered relative trashed by populist charlatans, politicised by racists and thugs, the flames fanned by a voracious media and social media, hungry for the next clickbait headline. It shows, once again, that murder is big business for politicians and journalists. Where they get recognised at all, the rights of the victim, their families and their friends are but a peripheral concern, trampled in the rush to advance unsavoury agendas. I repeat: the police via the IOPC has serious questions to answer, but a patient and considered review of all the available evidence is required to unearth them. Answers will not be arrived at, and lessons will not be learned, from a continued cycle of violence and bigotry amplified by online misinformation.
If we pause, however, we can see how the human element of this murder is playing out on Henry’s co-bereaved, and why their wishes should be respected. These are from the Victim Impact Statements read out by the Judge in court. Henry’s father “says that the family has effectively been given ‘a life sentence’, with the pain affecting every aspect of their lives and every significant family occasion, and that nothing will ever fill the permanent void left by Henry’s death.” Henry’s mother, Lucy Ross, says “the profound and lasting effect of this loss is something they will carry for the rest of their lives”. Henry’s sister, Olivia, says Henry’s death has caused her world to “fall apart” and that “The loss…is lifelong. Her life has been permanently changed by the death of her brother, and the emotional consequences remain acute and far-reaching.” Henry’s wider family members including his step-parents, variously talk of trauma, fear, anxiety, insecurity and a sense of powerlessness in the face of an overwhelming grief that has shattered them. Constantly seeing Henry’s face plastered across global media, and knowing that their calls for restraint have not been heeded, will be exacerbating the daily pain which will make them suffer daily.
When my father was murdered in 1991 it was well before the days of social media. Nonetheless, we as a family found it incredibly hard to come to terms with seeing his smiling face plastered across the media, to be chased out of the house by press photographers, to read the lies spread about him during the trial, and to have people in the street gawp and sometimes shout hurtful things about his death. In the days following Henry’s murder and the conclusion of Digwa’s criminal proceedings, his family will have experienced those microaggressions more frequently, and arguably with much greater intensity, because of the social media world we now inhabit. The circumstances of Henry’s murder are traumatic enough, but to have politicians jumping on it to advance the ideology of white victimhood is repugnant. Even if we put to one side the factual errors and prejudices in that narrative, propagated by people who know little to nothing about UK politics, policing, or the justice system, it goes against everything Henry stood for. It is also directly contravenes Henry's family’s public request not to use Henry’s death to stoke white supremacism. “The cynical exploitation of tragedy has become so normal that it barely registers anymore.” If this is true something badly needs to change. Henry Nowak’s murder is, sadly, another illustration that, where violent crime is concerned, those bereaved by the death of a loved never have their concerns seriously listened to or acted upon. If you want to respect Henry Nowak’s memory, read his families’ Victim Impact Statements. Then, reflect on the harm you are causing before you throw out another culture war hot-take on social media, or take to the streets to hurl bricks, bottles, broken fences and bins at police officers.
Traumatic bereavement affects people in a multitude of ways, but the precise manner in which it alters or changes one’s life are not well understood. As my book about the murder of my father explains, experiencing the murder of a direct relative changed me as a person, and changed my life irretrievably and forever. Intriguingly, other victims who speak out in the aftermath of the murder of a loved one seem to go through a similar type of life-altering experience.
