3 December 2023. For some reason the paths of Henry Nowak and Vickrum Digwa crossed in Southhampton that night. Digwa 23, stabbed 18 year old student Nowak with a knife described as a kirpan, one of the 5 articles of Sikh faith a baptised Sikh male was supposed to observe. Digwa’s brother called the police claiming a racist incident had occurred. The stabbing was not mentioned. Nowak tried unsuccessfully to get away by scaling a fence, trailing blood. The police arrive and then, this story reaches a level of horror that can barely be described.
The video that has been newly released of the police reaching the crime scene is very difficult to watch without incandescent rage rising. Digwa stands strong, claiming to be a victim of a racial attack. He points to a barely visible injury on his eyebrow when the police ask him if he is hurt. Meanwhile Henry the supposed assailant is writhing on the ground, gasping that he has been stabbed and cannot breathe. The police handcuff him even as he repeatedly says this.
The initial exchange :
Henry: I have been stabbed.
Police: I don’t think you have mate.
Henry had been stabbed 5 times, including twice in the back of his legs, once in the face and a fatal wound to the chest. The police are blind to all of this. They now claim that this was a complex situation and they had been misled by Digwa. It has been apparent for some time that the UK has absolute clowns pretending to be police but this is something else. “I cannot breathe”. These are infamous words that began a global conflagration of outrage 6 years ago. Henry said that he could not breathe 9 times. He pleaded that he had been stabbed 4 times. He asked for an ambulance. The police ignored him. Their concern was only for Digwa. It is incomprehensible behaviour.
The Digwa trial has inflamed ‘the far right’, that is basically every decent person in the world who has actually paid attention to this case. The establishment has studiously kept its eyes averted. The “anti-racist” activist crowd has reacted in horror to Elon Musk reacting to this case. A Bristol vigil for Henry was actually disrupted by a counter protest from “anti-racist” outfit Stand Up to Racism. They were supposedly challenging attempts to spread “racist myth and bigotry” around the tragedy. The conclusion of the trial clearly demonstrated where the racist bigotry was coming from.
Is this a turning point in the race discourse? It is difficult to say because the outrage is not universal. There are many influential people who simply cannot seem to see just how blatantly unfair police conduct has become. How the institutional response is to suppress bad news and target and isolate expressed concerns as far right political ploys. Sikh community leaders have come out bleating the familiar refrain about anti-sikh discrimination. It is slowly being revealed that Digwa was a bad ‘un even by Sikh standards having been barred from gurdwaras for his erratic conduct. Sikh concern seems to be more about preserving their religious right to carry a weapon and to cut off any attempt to revisit this special provision for them.They do not seem to be concerned that Digwa’s family not only attempted to hide the murder weapon but set about to grievously tarnish Henry’s reputation. Their conduct has been so egregious that they disrupted the sentencing hearing by shouting at Henry Nowak’s family, calling the judge racist, and had to be restrained by court security. (For what it is worth, my personal opinion is that no one gets special rights to carry a concealed weapon unless they are an officer of the law).
Starmer who kneeled for a dodgy man killed in a country thousands of miles away has finally issued a statement about the kind young student killed under his watch.
This an awful, shocking case.
Henry’s loved ones have gone through the trauma of a long trial and endured Henry's killer making up appalling claims about their son who was thoughtful, kind and deeply loved.
It is right that the IOPC is investigating the police’s response to… https://t.co/h7JAXXPMEQ
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) June 1, 2026
None in the police force or government will ever kneel for Henry Nowak.
