The death of a White student who was handcuffed by police after he had been stabbed is scary a nationwide outcry in Britain, with officers beneath fireplace for his or her conduct and far-right leaders accused of utilizing the teenager’s homicide to stoke racist violence for political acquire.
Earlier, on Tuesday night, that outcry spilled into clashes when tons of of demonstrators gathered exterior a police station in the southern English coastal metropolis of Southampton, the place they have been stirred up by far-right activists and clashed with riot police, throwing bricks and different projectiles, injuring 11 officers.
They additionally chanted “Henry, Henry,” referring to 18-year-old White pupil Henry Nowak, who police handcuffed as he lay dying from stab wounds inflicted by Vickrum Digwa. The 23-year-old Sikh man had falsely alleged to officers that he had been the sufferer of a racist assault. In upsetting bodycam footage launched by Hampshire Police, Nowak pleaded with officers saying, “I can’t breathe” and “I’ve been stabbed.” An officer replied, “I don’t think you have, mate.”
Digwa was sentenced to life in jail on Monday, concluding a case that the far-right has co-opted for its false narrative that British establishments, together with the police, are biased towards White Britons. Such a story collapses beneath scrutiny: White defendants, on common, serve a decrease custodial sentence than different ethnicities, Black prisoners serve a larger proportion of their unique sentence than different ethnic teams, whereas Black, Asian, combined and different ethnic teams have been extra more likely to be stopped and searched in London final yr, in response to authorities statistics.
But years of anemic financial progress, Britain’s lengthy historical past of racism and collapsing help for the nation’s center-left Labour authorities, which was elected nearly two years in the past promising sweeping change it has not but delivered, have created fertile floor for such concepts to take root.
And, towards the backdrop of an important upcoming by-election the place Nigel Farage’s Reform has an opportunity to defeat Labour management hopeful Andy Burnham, the hard-right populist social gathering is cautious of being outflanked by much more right-wing teams.
“Exploiting this tragedy to create grievance and division would be wrong in any circumstances, but to do it when the family are expressly saying ‘please don’t’ is unforgivable,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated Wednesday. He directed his anger particularly towards Farage, who stated the general public ought to reply to the incident with “pure cold rage.”
Even as Sikh neighborhood leaders condemned Digwa’s crime and Nowak’s father Mark stood exterior the courtroom on Monday to say he didn’t need his son’s death “to be used to create further division, hatred or tension,” far-right and hard-right figures fomented such division.
Nowak known as the police therapy of his son “shocking,” and urged the federal government to “treat knife crime as the national emergency it is.”
“This is not a case about Sikhism. This is not a case about racism. This is a case about murder,” he stated, in response to UK information company PA Media. “People should not be able to walk openly through the streets of Britain carrying a 21cm blade.”
Nowak, a freshman finance pupil, was touring dwelling from an evening out together with his associates when he was killed on December 3 2025. Digwa stabbed him 5 occasions, inflicting vital inside bleeding from a chest wound, native police stated in a statement.
Digwa then claimed in bodycam footage launched by police that Nowak had grabbed his turban and subjected him to racist abuse. Nowak died on the scene, and a pathologist discovered that nothing might have saved his life, even when officers hadn’t handcuffed him, the police assertion added.
Several right-wing figures capitalized on these occasions. Farage, whose Reform social gathering presently leads opinion polls, posted on X that the way in which the police responded signifies “the fear of being called racist was greater than dealing with Henry Novak’s murder.”
His social gathering nearly instantly unveiled a brand new proposed coverage that will ban the anti-racist practices British police have adopted over the previous couple of years after reviews found some forces perpetuated a racist inside tradition.
Such interventions have been rebutted by Dal Babu, a former chief superintendent of London’s Metropolitan Police. “I don’t accept the assertion that’s been made by far-right, anti-immigrant politicians,” he advised NCS.
“We have with some politicians almost a two-tier citizenship issue here, where they express huge concerns when a person of color commits a crime against a White person, that they don’t do when a White person commits a crime against a person of color. These are all British citizens, they just happen to be a different skin color,” he stated.
At the identical time, Babu acknowledged Nowak ought to by no means have been handcuffed, and police ought to have separated the 2 events to determine the occasions. An unbiased investigation into the police’s conduct is underway, with Starmer telling members of parliament Wednesday that “there are serious questions to answer, including how accusations of racism informed police thinking.”
But that has not quelled the far-right’s violence. One police officer, who wasn’t concerned in the case, was misidentified on-line and compelled to relocate after receiving death threats, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood stated Tuesday.
Britain’s far-right has a historical past of hijacking incidents like this to make use of as gasoline for their very own narratives. Last yr, activists capitalized on a flurry of Elon Musk posts on X to focus on historic abuse, primarily carried out by teams of males of primarily Pakistani heritage, in the northern English city of Oldham. Musk too has weighed in on Nowak’s homicide, echoing Farage’s assertion that racism is perceived as “the greatest offense that can be committed, even worse than rape or murder!”
Britain’s Sikh neighborhood is already looking for to calm the tensions. “At a time when emotions are understandably raw, we urge people not to allow the actions of one murderer to divide communities or fuel hostility towards innocent people,” a press release from 11 Sikh Labour lawmakers stated.
“The Sikh community shares the grief, shock and anger felt across the country. We mourn Henry Nowak, stand with his family, and support truth, justice and accountability.”