“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”.
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.
[Further reading: Six things we learned from the Mandelson files]
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This article appears in the 03 Jun 2026 issue of the New Statesman, The casual coup
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Subscribe here to comment“no good can come from pitting us against each other based on colour or religion.” Have we have not already been pitted against each other based on colour or religion? This case is not just about murder, though that would be easier. You described the scenario that included false accusations of racism and then concluded by telling us this is not about racism.
You agree that something has gone horribly wrong, but what would you say has gone horribly wrong? What is it that has brought about such a circumstance? For years now we have been having conversations about institutional, systemic, structural racism, and decolonisation; schools have adopted the perspectives of radicals and taught black and white boys and girls differently supported by the Equality Act.
Specifically section 159 on positive action that expressly defines what it is to discriminate on the base of a protected characteristic and to allow it to correct historic wrongs. Meaning that it is okay to discriminate against the ethnic English, Welsh, Scottish, and Northern Ireland people of this country and in favour other ethnicities. This is a part of the context of this tragedy. These officers are embedded and operating in a system informed by these norms, expectations, and regulations.
I think blinding yourself to the frustrations many in this country feel and dismissing these concerns as nonsense equally sows division and makes it impossible to actually deal with what is wrong here. It is not ethnic minorities themselves, though they are at risk of receiving the brunt of any reaction to this, it is the ideas and approaches we take to managing a multi-ethnic and multicultural Britain that bring about such circumstances.
The New Statesman has let us down quite shabbily. It seems to have taken riots before you felt able to comment. Nothing, until you had a far right action to rail against. Now you don’t have to address the hard question touched on in this description.
Questions like
Was the police reaction within the normal range one might expect? Why or why not?
What influences and other factors contributeed to this crime.
We had a long, considered and thoughtful piece about the rape of two young girls yesterday. It was well written, wise and considered. On Henry Novak nothing until it becomes the inevitable far right story. A story that matters but not the one about the murder
Leaves my with the justified belief it was just too awkward.
NS has let us down
It is the double standards that people object to, and the fact that racial criticism only ever goes one way.
All white people in Britain were told they had responsibility for the “murder” of George Floyd (a career criminal who died of a drug overdose, 4000 miles away). Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner were photographed taking the knee. There were months of protests about it and the Covid rules were suddenly ignored to let them happen.
But any suggestion that the Sikh community bears some responsibility for a Sikh man carrying a special Sikh knife and killing someone with it, is apparently going too far.