Opinion by Brendan O’Neil in Spiked; report of court sentencing from The Telegraph
So this is where wokeness has dragged us. Into a moral abyss where a boy is handcuffed by cops as he bleeds to death. Into a wasteland of virtue where an 18-year-old lad, stabbed five times, is treated as a speechcriminal as he gasps his final breaths. Into a sorry, dystopic excuse for a society where the last words a youngster hears are the defamatory cries of the man who killed him. ‘He was racist’, his murderer said. ‘I can’t breathe’, the boy begged.
The case of Henry Nowak has shocked the nation. He was a Polish-Briton in his first year at university. During a night out in Southampton in England in December last year, he had a fatal encounter with a Sikh man named Vickrum Digwa. Some kind of altercation took place. Digwa then stabbed Nowak five times … Nowak was gored in his chest, his face and his legs. He scrambled over a fence, leaving a blood trail in his wake. ‘I’m dying’, local residents heard him say. He was right.
As savage as the knifing was, it was what happened next that has shaken Britain’s soul. Digwa’s mother arrived and spirited away the murder weapon – it was later found hidden in the family home with 20 other Sikh swords and knives. Digwa then accused Nowak of having racially abused him. He said Nowak used a racist slur against him, punched him and knocked off his turban. These were ‘wicked lies’, the court heard during his murder trial. Yet there was a group of people on the scene of this atrocity who believed Digwa’s vile libels against the youth he had just fatally lacerated: the police.
The police’s behaviour that night defies all logic and humanity. They bowed to Digwa’s defamatory slurs and arrested and handcuffed young Henry. The Telegraph’s report captures the barbarism of the police’s credulous ineptitude that grim evening: ‘As the teenager lay there, unable to breathe as his lungs filled with blood, begging officers for help, they ignored his pleas and placed him under arrest. He died less than an hour later.’
Digwa was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years on Monday for the killing on Dec 4 last year.
Speaking outside Southampton Crown Court after the sentence was delivered, Henry’s father Mark said the police believed Digwa’s lies despite his son telling them nine times he could not breathe.
He said: “The police were told both by our son himself, and by a member of the public who called 999 that they heard someone shout that they had been stabbed. But the police did not believe them. Henry was then pulled across the gravel, his hands forced behind his back, and he was placed in handcuffs. Instead of being treated as a dying victim, police formally arrested Henry for assault and read him his rights. That was the last thing he heard.”
The trial has prompted serious questions about the impact anti-racism initiatives are having on the mindset of officers on the front line.
Lord Hannan, a Conservative peer, said: “A man is stabbed to death by someone who accuses him of being a racist – and the first thing the police do on arrival is to handcuff the dying man.”
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, posted on his social media site that the UK government “helped murder this poor English boy”. He later said the actions of the police were “unconscionable” and he would fund legal action against them.
No one witnessed the attack itself, but locals called police after hearing Mr Nowak cry out for help.
Before any officers arrived at the scene, however, Digwa’s brother turned up and they also called the police. Digwa then alleged that the student had injured himself when trying to climb a fence.
“He didn’t seek help for the man he’d injured with his sizeable knife. Instead, he accused him of being racist and being drunk,” Nicholas Lobbenberg KC, the prosecutor, said.
Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, and father, Moga Singh Digwa, also made their way to the scene before police arrived. Ms Kaur picked up the ceremonial knife – called a shastar – used by her son in the attack and ran back to the family home where she stashed it, the court heard. She was found guilty of assisting an offender.
When officers arrived, they arrested and handcuffed Mr Nowak after listening to Digwa and his family. Bodycam footage has not yet been released by police, despite requests to do so.
Mr Nowak lapsed into unconsciousness, and police belatedly attempted to give first aid. He was pronounced dead at 12.37am in the middle of the street. His final words were “please, brother, I can’t breathe”.
In his closing speech, Mr Lobbenberg said Digwa had cleverly used his “trump card” by alleging he was the victim of racist abuse when police officers arrived.
Digwa was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years on Monday for the killing on Dec 4 last year. The public gallery was packed with dozens of Henry’s friends and family. A large number of Digwa’s relatives were also in the courtroom, as were around 20 members of the press.
The bodycam footage of the officers treating a dying vicitm as a racist attacker has not been released. This exchange is reported from a voice tape played in court by Alison Pearson of The Telegraph on X
The video footage may be genuinely with held as it is evidence in a Police Complaints Committee investigation.
It would genuinely be indecent to show an innocent boy’s dying breaths to public view, but editing would be possible. One cannot but ponder, as in the reporting restrictions on some grooming trials, is this really for the public good?
Elon Musk ponders something similar and says what many of us are thinking. And.
Update – The appropriate section of the bodycam footage has been released and shown on the10 o’clock news. An idiot could see that Henry was very ill. Lying prone, groaning, in obvious pain which was clearly not faked. The policeman who dismissed his plea “I’ve been stabbed’ was as dismissive as the words “I don’t think so mate” sound on paper. The murderer’s mother has been convicted for hiding the weapon but his brother who was directing all this doesn’t seem to have been charged with anything.
I am overcome with admiration for Mr Nowak who spoke to the press outside court, condeming Vickrum Digwa for his son’s death by murder, but also condeming the police for their callousness towards their dying son. He and his family reminded me of the parents of Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber who were murdered in Nottingham last year (the third victim was Ian Coates) by Valdo Calocane, a man of known violence who should have been sectioned to a mental hospital years previously, but was not, because the health care ‘professionals’ considered that black men were over-represented in the psychiatric detention community.
They are also educated and articulate and are not accepting the lame excuses and platitudes from the authorities. Neither is Siobhan Whyte, the mother of Rhiannon Whyte murdered by a Sudanese asylum seeker living at the hotel where she worked. So far as his motive came out in court it seems he was displeased with the quality of the biscuits Miss Whyte served him. Mrs Whyte spoke at Unite the Kingdom last month. In their differing ways none of these parents are going away quietly.
