Handcuffed student’s death sparks uproar in UK, as far right accused of inflaming tensions

By Issy Ronald, CNN

(CNN) — The death of a White student who was handcuffed by police after he had been stabbed is provoking a national outcry in Britain, with officers under fire for their conduct and far-right leaders accused of using the teen’s murder to stoke racist violence for political gain.

Earlier, on Tuesday evening, that outcry spilled into clashes when hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside a police station in the southern English coastal city of Southampton, where they were stirred up by far-right activists and clashed with riot police, throwing bricks and other projectiles, injuring 11 officers.

They also chanted “Henry, Henry,” referring to 18-year-old White student 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 victim of a racist attack. In upsetting bodycam footage released 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 prison on Monday, concluding a case that the far-right has co-opted for its false narrative that British institutions, including the police, are biased against White Britons. Such a narrative collapses under scrutiny: White defendants, on average, serve a lower custodial sentence than other ethnicities, Black prisoners serve a greater proportion of their original sentence than other ethnic groups, while Black, Asian, mixed and other ethnic groups were more likely to be stopped and searched in London last year, according to government statistics.

But years of anemic economic growth, Britain’s long history of racism and collapsing support for the country’s center-left Labour government, which was elected almost two years ago promising sweeping change it has not yet delivered, have created fertile ground for such ideas to take root.

And, against the backdrop of a crucial upcoming by-election where Nigel Farage’s Reform has a chance to defeat Labour leadership hopeful Andy Burnham, the hard-right populist party is wary of being outflanked by even more right-wing groups.

“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 said Wednesday. He directed his anger specifically toward Farage, who said the public should respond to the incident with “pure cold rage.”

How the murder unfolded

Even as Sikh community leaders condemned Digwa’s crime and Nowak’s father Mark stood outside the court on Monday to say he did not want his son’s death “to be used to create further division, hatred or tension,” far-right and hard-right figures fomented such division.

Nowak called the police treatment of his son “shocking,” and urged the 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 said, according to UK news agency PA Media. “People should not be able to walk openly through the streets of Britain carrying a 21cm blade.”

Nowak, a freshman finance student, was traveling home from a night out with his friends when he was killed on December 3 2025. Digwa stabbed him five times, causing significant internal bleeding from a chest wound, local police said in a statement.

Digwa then claimed in bodycam footage released by police that Nowak had grabbed his turban and subjected him to racist abuse. Nowak died at the scene, and a pathologist found that nothing could have saved his life, even if officers hadn’t handcuffed him, the police statement added.

Several right-wing figures capitalized on these events. Farage, whose Reform party currently leads opinion polls, posted on X that the way the police responded indicates “the fear of being called racist was greater than dealing with Henry Novak’s murder.”

His party almost immediately unveiled a new proposed policy that would ban the anti-racist practices British police have adopted over the last few years after reviews found some forces perpetuated a racist internal culture.

Such interventions were 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 told CNN.

“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 said.

At the same time, Babu acknowledged Nowak should never have been handcuffed, and police should have separated the two parties to establish the events. An independent 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 involved in the case, was misidentified online and forced to relocate after receiving death threats, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said Tuesday.

Britain’s far-right has a history of hijacking incidents like this to use as fuel for their own narratives. Last year, activists capitalized on a flurry of Elon Musk posts on X to highlight historic abuse, primarily carried out by groups of men of mainly Pakistani heritage, in the northern English town of Oldham. Musk too has weighed in on Nowak’s murder, 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 community is already seeking 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 statement from 11 Sikh Labour lawmakers said.

“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.”

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CNN’s Becky Pinnington and Max Foster contributed reporting.