Mother of UK student killer jailed for hiding knife used in attack

The mother of a British Sikh man jailed for killing a white student was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday for taking away the ceremonial knife used in the fatal stabbing.

Henry Nowak was handcuffed by police in December as he lay dying after his attacker, Vickrum Digwa, falsely claimed he had been the victim of racial abuse.

Digwa, 23, was jailed in June for at least 21 years for killing Nowak with a ceremonial knife with a 21-centimetre blade in Southampton, southern England, after an altercation about a mobile phone.

The case was taken up by far-right figures, who claimed it showed so-called two-tier policing, a term used by critics who say police treat ethnic minorities more leniently.

Digwa's mother, Kiran Kaur, 53, was sentenced at Southampton Crown Court for taking the knife from the scene to the family home. Judge William Mousley said a responsible parent would have challenged their son and encouraged him to do the right thing. He said Kaur instead took the knife home and placed it with a larger collection of ceremonial and other weapons in her son's bedroom, which would have helped conceal what it had been used for.

The judge also said Kaur's actions added to her son's claim that he had done nothing wrong and was the victim.

Prosecutor Nicholas Lobbenberg told the court that the absence of the weapon left Nowak dying terrified, alone and disbelieved.

Kaur's defence lawyer, Mark Watson, said her actions came from a moment of panic after a late-night call from Digwa. He said the weapon was not destroyed, cleaned, broken up or hidden.