This is not what Henry Nowak’s family wanted

Political point scoring won’t bring back the murdered 18-year-old

“I’ve been stabbed,” Henry Nowak pleaded with police. “You’ve been stabbed…? I don’t think you have, mate,” one of the officers replied. Having been pulled across the gravel, the 18-year-old can be heard saying he can’t breathe. When the police arrived on the scene, in a suburb of Southampton on 3 December last year, instead of helping Nowak, they handcuffed him. He was arrested while he was lying on the ground, barely conscious. The last words he heard were his rights being read. He died just after 12.30am. He had been stabbed five times.

As I watched that bodycam footage on Monday night (1 June), tears came to my eyes. My own children lay sleeping upstairs. Nowak’s parents have not only had to endure losing their child – they have done so in the knowledge that no one tried to comfort him. No one held him in his last moments. He would have been frightened.

I could not be as dignified as Mark Nowak, Henry’s father, has been in recent days. Standing outside the court after his son’s murderer was sentenced to life imprisonment, he spoke calmly. “Henry told officers that he could not breathe nine times. He told them he had been stabbed four times,” Mark Nowak said. “Let me be absolutely clear – we hold Vickrum Digwa solely and 100 per cent responsible for the brutal murder of our son. But Henry should not have died on the streets of Southampton in police custody. The way he was treated was inhumane and degrading.” The contrast to how Digwa was treated by those same officers was “unbearable”.

The facts are horrendous. Vickrum Digwa’s brother, Gurpeet, called 999, falsely alleging that they had been racially abused. “We just got attacked racially by some white person,” he told the operator. He claimed the abuse was both physical and verbal. They were Sikh men; someone had tried to remove their turbans. When the police arrived, the lies were repeated. Officers first checked whether they were all right, before noticing Henry on the floor.

Vickrum Digwa had murdered Henry Nowak, stabbing him with an eight-inch dagger that he said he carried as part of his Sikh faith. While the police were no doubt expecting something very different to what they found, their behaviour defies belief. An officer can be heard asking: “Where is it you think you’ve been stabbed? In the face?” – to which a voice replies: “He hasn’t been stabbed.” Why were they so quick to disbelieve? Why was Henry handcuffed when he posed no threat to anyone?

On Tuesday (2 June), Nigel Farage made what he called an “emergency address” to the nation. It was no such thing. It was a cynical act that used the death of a young man to sow division. The police, he said, were more concerned about being accused of racism than of helping a dying man. “An accusation of a racial slur was treated more seriously than an act of murder.”

The Reform leader argued that Nowak’s words – “I can’t breathe” – had echoes of the murder of George Floyd in the US in May 2020. Back then, “Keir Starmer was taking the knee. Black Lives Matter exploded all over the country,” Farage hissed. This time, there was “silence” from politicians and “much of the media”. Proof of a “two-tier culture… where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities”.

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This is nonsense. Every broadcaster, newspaper and radio station in the country is leading on the story. Politicians of all stripes have commented on the awful footage. There is unanimity in the belief that something has gone horrendously wrong. It is utterly irresponsible to whip up hatred and encourage people to respond with “pure cold rage”.

Not to be outdone by his former colleague, Rupert Lowe – who now leads Restore Britain – went further. In an incoherent, baseless rage, he asked in a post on X, “How many more young British men and women are going to die?” God willing, none. It is simply not true, as Lowe claimed, that “it’s happening right now, in every city across the country.” Yet, within 11 hours of his post, Lowe’s words had been viewed by 16.5 million people. Many may well believe that “children have been sacrificed to death in order to appease foreign cultures.”

This vile rhetoric has consequences. The Sikh community fears reprisals. Death threats have been issued against police. One misidentified officer has been forced to relocate to protect himself and his family. “Misinformation and inflammatory commentary is making a dreadful situation even worse,” the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said.

This is not what Henry’s family wanted. “We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension,” Mark Nowak told reporters outside court. “We want his story to make our streets safer for everyone.”

Those police officers must be held to account. It is hard to disagree with Ed Davey’s verdict: this was “an evil murder made so much worse by the police response”. We must know what happened, and why. If the fear of being accused of racism was a factor, we must be honest about it and tackle it. But no good can come from pitting us against each other based on colour or religion.

The sound of Henry Nowak’s pleading will not leave my mind. But we cannot blame a whole community for the acts of one individual. As Nowak’s father said, this is not a case about Sikhism, or racism. It’s about murder.

SOURE: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2026/06/this-is-not-what-henry-nowaks-family-wanted