🚨 Until today, I was unaware of the circumstances leading up to the tragic stabbing of Henry Nowak.
The tweet quoted below contains a more detailed commentary on the fallout following the sentencing.
On 3 December 2025, Henry Nowak (18), a University of Southampton student, was walking alone in the Portswood area of Southampton after a night out.
During his walk home, he was recording himself on Snapchat. While walking along Belmont Road, he encountered Vickrum Singh Digwa (23) approaching from the opposite direction.
As they passed, Nowak filmed Digwa on his phone and directed taunting remarks at him. The Snapchat footage was shown in court. In the footage, Nowak says: “Innit bad man, what bad man. You’re a bad man, say you’re a bad man, go on.”
Digwa responded: “I am a bad man.”
Following this verbal exchange, Digwa turned back towards Nowak. A physical confrontation occurred in which Digwa took or attempted to take Nowak’s phone. A struggle followed between the two men. Digwa then produced a knife and stabbed Nowak multiple times.
Nowak suffered five stab wounds, including a fatal wound to the chest which caused catastrophic internal injury. He also sustained additional wounds to other parts of the body.
The judge’s comments are worth reading in full. Here is just one extract (I direct you particularly to paragraph 27):
13. “In Belmont Road, you and Henry passed each other. You claimed he deliberately barged into you. I am sure that was one of the many lies you have told and repeated since it happened. However, there was an interaction between you both. Henry, perhaps cheekily, made a comment, asking if you were a “bad man.” He was filming you on his phone when he said it. The tone of his voice was not aggressive or threatening but, as it turned out, a tragic error of judgement. It is a reasonable conclusion that the comment was because he had seen the large, sheathed dagger. That would have been a very unusual thing for an 18-year-old student and non-Sikh to see.
14. You moved towards him and, confidently, told him that you were “a bad man.” This was the response, I believe, of someone who thought they were being disrespected, made worse by the perceived intrusion of being filmed. You were not frightened or concerned and grabbed his phone, removing it from him. The exact events which immediately followed were only witnessed by Henry and you. However, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that Henry would have wanted his phone back, believing it had been stolen from him or that he had been robbed. That may have led to a physical struggle between you and him. In that situation, there was every need for self-restraint and control on your part. As someone who was born and raised in the UK, that should have been your focus rather than any distorted view of your religious traditions. Strong words, even a verbal threat, might have been justified but no more.
15. It would also seem that your turban may have been knocked, pulled or, potentially, punched off your head. The wearing of a turban at all times is another fundamental religious requirement of being a male Sikh. The removal of it by another would be considered a serious act and a further mark of disrespect. It is a reasonable conclusion that this would only have added to your anger.
16. You drew the dagger from its sheath and, as the jury was sure, you deliberately stabbed Henry in the chest with it. The knife passed through several layers of clothing, as demonstrated by the multiple slits in his dark top where the material had been overlaid on itself in the struggle and the single slit in his shirt. It passed upwards through soft tissue, between the two uppermost ribs, catching a lung and cutting an important vein behind the collar bone. This was to a depth of 8cm from the skin surface. The consequent bleeding flowed into his chest cavity. The pathologist, Amanda Jeffrey, found 1200 ml, or over 2 pints, of blood there. She said that no emergency medical treatment would have permitted access to the bleeding vein. In simple terms, he would not have survived, however quickly he received first aid, CPR or expert medical treatment.
17. You also stabbed him twice to the upper leg at some point and once again to the lower abdomen/groin area at the front. The latter only resulted in a knife tip injury; the former were both to a substantial depth, although not as deep as the chest wound. Henry’s face was also slashed with the blade of the dagger, but I cannot be sure that was aimed or intended. However, one or more of the four stabs must have had an immediate effect, as Henry was never able to put up his hands to defend himself from further serious injury. He was defenceless.
18. You, by contrast, had little, if any, injury. You told the attending police that you had a small bruise and swelling to your eye from a punch, but it is not obvious on body-worn footage taken then, and there has been no independent evidence given in the trial of any injury at all to you.
19. Your brother, Gurpreet, arrived on the scene very shortly after your attack had finished. You then filmed Henry desperately trying to get away from you, somehow scaling a fence onto a communal bin before landing on a car in front of the property next door. Bloodstains show that he had got one, more or all of his injuries before then.
20. You then showed a callous disregard for his wellbeing, knowing you had stabbed him to the chest. You continued to make films of Henry suffering, ignoring much of his desperation at having been stabbed. You told him that had not happened, no doubt to convince others who were nearby. Your attitude did not change even though Henry was clearly going downhill very fast. Your brother did much the same, although he may just have been accepting what you had told him, rather than lying himself. You lied to him that you had been attacked, picking up on his question about whether it had been accompanied by racism by falsely claiming that Henry had called you a “Paki.” I am sure that Henry had said nothing racist. You are the only person to make that claim and it is completely at odds with his previous character.
21. You joined your brother in relating these lies to the police. By then your mother and father were at the scene. Gurpreet explained that no weapons had been involved or were present. In fact, whilst he was talking to the call operator, you told your mother to take the murder weapon, sheath and belt away, which she did. You did not tell your father what had really happened. Much of the time you just stood by as he at least tried to do something to help Henry.
22. You carried on telling these wicked lies when police attended the scene, hampering them in doing their job and effectively obstructing the course of justice. You kept Henry’s phone with the incriminating recording of you on it. You had no intention of handing it over. It was found on you after you had been arrested and taken into police custody.
23. Thereafter, the time came when the police needed permission from a court to extend the time for you to be questioned in custody and arranged for you and Gurpreet to be taken there for that purpose. They took the opportunity to record secretly any conversation between the two of you on the journey. Speaking in Punjabi, you agreed to pretend you had acted in self-defence even though you confessed to stabbing Henry three times, including once to the chest with the dagger. You knew you were guilty, demonstrated by your saying to Gurpreet that if there were any cameras in that part of Belmont Road, you would be unable to put forward self-defence. You decided, much as you had at the scene, to try to cover it up. In all your police interviews, you decided not to answer questions about the incident. Instead, you made a written statement on 7/12/2025 which told more lies.
24. Once the criminal proceedings were underway, you made another statement, developing and modifying those lies. It was only when you gave evidence in court that you put forward your full defence. The jury entirely rejected that defence and I do too.
25. In addition to killing Henry and the irreparable harm to those close to him, you have also caused real suffering to others who knew him. You have brought shame upon your family, your community and your religion. 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.
26. You bear some responsibility for the offence committed by your mother when you asked her to take the murder weapon away from you after she arrived on the scene. Your lies to the police about what had happened led, in part, to the arrests of your father, brother and mother for murder and their being taken into police custody. Your mother has remained in custody for the past seven months.
27. Another consequence of those lies is that the attending police officers honestly believed that there were reasonable grounds for suspecting Henry had committed an offence and arrested him, with the consequence he was handcuffed for about a minute before his condition further deteriorated and the arresting officer began CPR. The police were given a convincing but wholly false narrative of the incident. It was dark and Henry was wearing a dark top. The entry damage caused by the knife through it would not have been obvious. Whilst there was visible blood on Henry, it would not have clearly been seen coming from that wound and the clearly visible facial wound was not life-threatening. Henry was complaining that he had been stabbed and was struggling to breathe, but that would not have necessarily told the officers how serious the situation had become. 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. The genuine shock to the particular police officer when he realised that he had been giving CPR to Henry when he had a serious chest wound tends to show that he was doing his best in a very difficult situation.
28. You were still present at the scene when Henry was saying he was dying and still you did not tell the truth about how seriously you knew you had hurt him and the need for urgency. Instead, you said he had not been stabbed and that he was exaggerating.
29. The sentence for murder is life imprisonment. You will remain in prison for life unless the Parole Board decides that it is safe for you to be released on a life licence.”
Link to the judge’s full sentencing remarks can be found here:
judiciary.uk/judgments/r-v-v…