The police force at the centre of the Henry Nowak scandal tried to intervene during his murderer’s trial in a highly unusual move, The Sunday Times can reveal. The Hampshire force sought to release a public statement to address what it described as “disinformation” circulating online while court proceedings were at a critical point against Vickrum Digwa. However, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) advised the force that such a step could risk jeopardising the “integrity” of the case.
The revelation about the planned intervention is likely to put further pressure on the beleaguered force and its chief constable, Alexis Boon, because the conduct of its own officers was under scrutiny during the trial. The Sunday Times can also reveal that the force wanted to portray Nowak as the aggressor in an official statement three days after his death, but changed their wording following outrage from his grieving family. Nowak died in the early hours of December 4 after being stabbed multiple times by Digwa, who is Sikh and had falsely claimed to police that he had been racially abused.
An initial police statement later that morning said: “It was reported two men had been assaulted by an unknown man.” The Nowak family, raw with grief, became concerned that a false narrative was being pushed about their son. It is understood that police told the family the next update they planned to publish, which would include the Nowaks’ tribute, would again infer that he was the initial aggressor. Officers dropped that section of the statement which only referred to an “altercation” when published. By that point, police had ample evidence that Digwa was a liar.
Digwa stabbed Nowak, a first-year finance and accountancy student, to death following a night out in Southampton three weeks before Christmas. Instead of treating Nowak as the victim, officers attending the scene handcuffed the undergraduate following false claims by Digwa that he had been “racially” attacked. When Nowak told officers “I can’t breathe” and pointed out that he had been stabbed, one police constable replied: “I don’t think you have, mate.”
As Nowak lay dying, Digwa, now 23, did not tell the 999 call handler or the officers who attended the scene that he had been stabbed. It was only after Nowak lost consciousness that police realised he was gravely injured, gave him first aid and finally arrested Digwa. They did not handcuff him. Two days later, detectives secretly recorded Digwa speaking in Punjabi to his brother, Gurpreet, who had arrived on the scene shortly after the attack The brothers were in the back of a police van being taken to court so that officers could request more time to question them. Digwa admitted to his brother that he had stabbed Nowak, and made no mention of his earlier allegation of racial abuse. Instead, he agreed with Gurpreet that he would claim he had acted in self-defence.
Digwa, a practising Sikh who carried two ceremonial daggers, was jailed for a minimum term of 21 years last week after a jury at Southampton crown court found him guilty of murder.
The death has led to intense scrutiny of the police’s diversity and inclusion policies, with forces being accused of “two-tier policing”, whereby ethnic minorities are said to be treated more favourably than white people. Writing in The Sunday Times this weekend, Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservatives, accuses policing’s senior leaders of “allowing these ill-advised frameworks” to take hold.
“It is the police chiefs, operationally independent from government, who must take responsibility for letting that happen,” she writes. “I believe the issue is the training [officers] are given. Well-meaning, but totally wrong-headed, lacking in common sense and, possibly illegal… The problem is not institutional racism towards blacks or whites but institutional incompetence.”
Badenoch has asked Sir Keir Starmer for a rapid independent review of Nowak’s death. It is understood his family support her request. She argued that leaders of public institutions had become scared of making mistakes around race, so have outsourced moral judgment to “activist consultants and ‘community leaders’ who often do not represent the public”.
Badenoch said: “The Black Lives Matter movement… made institutions more frightened, more racialised and more divided. Now we are seeing the flip-side: a White Lives Matter born of the same racial grievance. We will not defeat identity politics by building a mirror-image version of it.”
The case and, in particular, Nowak’s treatment by officers, has sparked international outrage. JD Vance, the US vice-president, blamed the “mass invasion of migrants” for Nowak’s death, despite the fact that Digwa was born in Britain. Last Tuesday, a protest outside a police station in Southampton led by Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist, descended into violent rioting.
Hampshire’s attempt to issue a public statement after Digwa’s trial had already started is understood to have been motivated in part over concerns about online commentary and the threat of civil unrest. However, warnings about the potential risk of contempt are normally issued by the Attorney-General’s Office.
This weekend, Hampshire Constabulary sought to defend its attempted intervention. A spokeswoman said: “Following the opening of the trial and the media reporting that followed, a significant amount of mis- and disinformation was circulating online. This included requests for information to be shared that had not been fully examined as part of the murder trial. The intention of the statement was to remind the public that there were ongoing legal proceedings and that the law is clear that nothing could be published which could prejudice the trial. The decision not to publish was taken following advice from the CPS.”
The prosecution service said on Saturday night: “The CPS highlighted to the police that protecting the integrity of the ongoing trial was essential, and of the risks of referring to any aspect of the evidence before it had been heard by the court and the case had been summed up by the judge to the jury.” It added: “However, it was made clear that whether a statement was released was ultimately a police operational decision.”
Hampshire Constabulary had to refer itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) immediately after Nowak’s death. The IOPC, which had stated earlier in the week that the officers were being interviewed as witnesses, said on Wednesday that it was seeking to determine whether there “may be misconduct on the part of any of the officers involved”.
Boon apologised to the Nowaks on Wednesday, two days after Digwa was sentenced. He told the BBC he was “distressed” by the bodycam footage of Nowak’s arrest and apologised on behalf of his force for how he was treated in his final moments. Two days after his televised interview, he offered to meet the Nowak family. It is understood that they have not yet decided whether to do so.
The Nowak family has made clear that they do not want their son’s death to be used to stoke division. “They are obviously very upset with the protests that happened in Southampton on Tuesday evening — that is not in accordance with their wishes,” said Donna Jones, the police and crime commissioner for Hampshire, who helped support the family last week. “They are urging calm reflection.”
Jones, a Conservative, described the bodyworn camera footage from one of the responding officers, released publicly after Digwa’s conviction, as “the most shocking thing” she had ever seen. “Having watched the entire footage of over 45 minutes, do I think that Henry should have been handcuffed? No, I don’t,” she said. “He couldn’t even sit up. He clearly wasn’t [at risk of] absconding after arrest… I think that was an error in judgment, albeit mitigated by a very confusing situation that the officers [came] up to.”
Mark Nowak, Henry’s father, who was a senior manager at the supermarket chain Morrisons, contrasted the treatment of his son with that afforded to Digwa. Speaking outside court, he said: “Henry did not die with dignity. He did not die with the care he deserved. He lost consciousness before anyone believed him… The way he was treated was inhumane and degrading. His murderer, however, was afforded decency, he was believed… and as Vickrum Digwa himself told the court, while under arrest for Henry’s murder, police even took him to the kitchen so he could choose his food.”
He is leading his family’s calls for change in three areas: the law around ceremonial knives, policing and sentencing. They believe that Digwa’s prison term is too lenient.
Digwa, a member of the Nihang order of Sikhs, who pride themselves on carrying traditional weapons, had two knives on him that night: a shastar with a 21cm blade, which he used to stab Henry, and a kirpan, the ceremonial blade worn by Sikhs as part of their religious observance. The family do not want a ban on the kirpan, but they argue the law needs to be tightened to define more clearly what constitutes a ceremonial knife. They want a legal limit on blade length, alongside tighter controls on the online sale of religious knives, and hope to work with Sikh communities to achieve reform.
The family do not believe that the knife used to kill Henry would be recognised by most Sikhs as a ceremonial blade, however. Their hope is that they can stop other families suffering as theirs has, and that something positive can come from the cruel misery of Henry’s death.
