Court of Appeal to review Vickrum Digwa murder sentence after referral
Ellie Reeves KC referred Vickrum Digwa’s 21-year minimum life term for Henry Nowak’s murder to the Court of Appeal under the unduly lenient sentence scheme.
The Court of Appeal will now decide whether Vickrum Digwa’s life sentence for murdering Henry Nowak was too lenient, after Solicitor General Ellie Reeves KC referred the case under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme. Murder is one of the offences that can be referred, and law officers have 28 days from sentencing to consider whether a review is justified. If judges agree the punishment was unduly lenient, they can increase the minimum term.
Digwa was sentenced on 1 June 2026 at Southampton Crown Court to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years for killing Henry Nowak, 18, in Southampton on 3 December 2025. Nowak was a first-year accounting and finance student at the University of Southampton and the first in his family to go to university. He was stabbed after a night out, using a Sikh kirpan ceremonial knife with an eight-inch blade.
The case drew intense public anger because Digwa falsely told police that Nowak had racially abused him, and officers handcuffed the dying student before he lost consciousness. Hampshire Police have apologised over their handling of the incident, and the matter is also being reviewed by the police watchdog. The killing, the body-cam footage that followed, and protests that turned violent have fuelled nationwide outrage and sharp political scrutiny. Henry Nowak’s father, Mark Nowak, has spoken publicly about the family’s grief and called for knife crime to be treated as a national emergency.
Reeves said the case “horrified” her, underlining the level of concern now attached to both the murder and the sentence imposed. The referral puts the 21-year minimum term back under judicial scrutiny and opens the possibility that Digwa could face a longer period before parole if the Court of Appeal decides the original punishment did not reflect the seriousness of the crime. It also raises a wider question about consistency in the sentencing of serious violent offences, as public confidence in the handling of the case remains under strain.
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