A man has been convicted of murdering an 18-year-old university student with a 21-centimetre Sikh ceremonial blade after a trial that centred on whether the fatal stabbing was an act of self-defence or murder — with the jury rejecting the defendant’s claim that he had been racially abused and attacked before drawing the knife.
Vickrum Digwa, 23, was found guilty of murder at Southampton Crown Court, along with a charge of carrying a knife in public. His mother, Kiran Kaur, 53, was also found guilty of assisting an offender by removing the weapon from the scene after the attack.
Henry Nowak, a first-year student at the University of Southampton from Chafford Hundred in Essex, was fatally stabbed on 3 December 2025 as he was walking home along Belmont Road after a night out with his football team. The court heard that Digwa was carrying a kirpan — a religious knife — with a 21cm blade, which the prosecution said caused five stab wounds to Mr Nowak, including two to the back of his legs and a fatal wound to the chest.
Digwa had been carrying two blades at the time of the incident. The first was a smaller Sikh kirpan, a legally protected article of Sikh faith in the United Kingdom, which was not unsheathed or used at any point. It was the larger blade — described by prosecutors as a Shastar — that caused the fatal injuries.
Throughout the trial, Digwa maintained he had acted in self-defence after Nowak racially abused him and knocked off his turban. He said Nowak had told him “I am from Essex, you don’t know what people from Essex are on” and that the teenager had grabbed him by the hair and said “I am going to kill you.” Digwa also told the court that during the incident he had been thinking about attacks on Sikhs that had taken place in the preceding months, some of which had been filmed by the perpetrators.
However, according to ITV News Meridian, a Snapchat video Henry Nowak filmed on the night was played in court. In it, Nowak could be heard saying to Digwa: “Say you are a badman, go on.” Digwa replies “I am a badman” and moves towards Nowak, grabbing his phone. The pathologist’s evidence, cited by the judge in his summing up, found that Nowak was below the legal drink-driving limit at the time of the attack, undermining Digwa’s portrayal of him as dangerously intoxicated.
Prosecutor Nicholas Lobbenberg KC had told the jury that Digwa had deliberately lied about the circumstances of the encounter, fabricating claims that Nowak had used racist language in order to make the stabbing appear lawful. He described the racial abuse allegation as “a wicked lie about a dying man and a wicked lie about a dead man.” Digwa was also described at trial as a man deeply familiar with weapons who had collected blades since childhood and had trained with them since the age of 12.
Kiran Kaur was accused of taking the blade from her son at the scene and concealing it among what prosecutors described as “an arsenal of weapons” at the family home. Police found 20 bladed articles when they searched the property.
Both defendants had denied all charges throughout the trial.
