Sentencing in a Southampton murder case involving a kirpan (a ceremonial dagger associated with Sikhism), along with the release of video footage of the police response sparked debates online and in the U.K. Parliament on Tuesday around policing and knife crime and the politicization of a brutal murder.

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Vickrum Digwa, 23, was sentenced on Monday to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years for killing 18-year-old Henry Nowak in Southampton on December 3, 2025. Nowak was unarmed and stabbed multiple times by Digwa with the latter’s 21 cm long kirpan. Digwa had then gone on to lie to the police that Nowak, who was alone, used racial slurs against him. He had also lied to the police saying he had not stabbed Nowak.  

Digwa was convicted of murder last Thursday. Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, 53, who removed the dagger, sheath and belt from the scene is also in police custody. She has been convicted for assisting an offender and will be sentenced at a later date.

The privilege of being allowed to carry a bladed article in public comes with a “huge responsibility” the judge said during the sentencing.

Disturbing police bodycam footage released on Monday night showed a dying Nowak repeatedly telling police officers that he could not breathe and that he had been stabbed. Yet, Nowak was propped up, handcuffed and informed by the police that he was being arrested for assault.

 One officer is heard asking Nowak where he was stabbed and then saying, “Don’t think you have, mate.”

Another officer can be heard saying Nowak has to be checked (for stab wounds). Digwa can be seen claiming his turban was pulled off and that he had sustained a bruise above his eye.

“Henry did not die with dignity…he lost consciousness before anyone believed him,” Henry’s father, Mark Nowak, said outside Southampton Crown Court on Monday.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), a police watchdog, has launched an investigation into the incident.

U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood made a statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday evening, in which she condemned the attack and pushed back against claims of two-tier policing (i.e., different policing procedures for different communities).

Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick (until recently a Conservative) told Parliament that the police officer who arrested Nowak should be prosecuted for dereliction of duty.

Earlier in the day, Reform U.K. chief Nigel Farage asked people to respond to the crime with “pure cold rage”, even as he characterised the Novak family’s response as “extraordinarily dignified”.

The victim’s father had said that he did not want the murder to be used to create “further hatred or division”.

Ms Mahmood told the House of Commons that she echoed the Nowak family’s words from Monday and that the case should not be used to turn communities against each other.

Several Sikh MPs strongly condemned the murder in the House of Commons warning against scapegoating specific communities and politicising the murder along religious fault lines.

“There have been calls to limit the right of Sikhs to carry their ceremonial knife, the kirpan, one of the five holy items in their faith,” Ms Mahmood told Parliament, adding that it was the previous Conservative government, in 2019, that had strengthened protections related to long weapons, including kirpans, carried for religious and ceremonial purposes.

“But let me be clear, carrying a knife for the purpose of religious observance is one thing. Using it as so tragically occurred in this case is quite another,” she said. The Home Secretary reiterated the government’s commitment to halving knife crime in the U.K. in this decade.

“We are deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the Nowak family has had to endure,” the Digwa family said in a statement via the Sikh Press Association, in which they also apologised to the Sikh community for their son’s actions which, they said, had “unfairly brought the community into disrepute”.