Previously unreleased police bodycam footage has revealed that officers appeared to agree with murderer Vikrum Digwa’s lies about facing racist abuse from slain student Henry Nowak.
Earlier this month, police released partial footage from police officer-worn cameras of the final moments of 18-year-old Anglo-Polish student Henry Nowak in Southampton last year.
The 3-minute clip sparked protests and riots in response to an officer being shown to have refused to believe that Nowak had been stabbed or could not breathe as he placed the teen in handcuffs and arrested him. Infamously, when Nowak said in a strained voice that he had been stabbed, an officer was heard saying, “I don’t think you have, mate”.
Now, weeks after the trial concluded, and Digwa being found guilty and sentenced to at least 21 years in prison, police have begun to release more information about the fateful final moments of Nowak’s life.
On Friday, footage released to the BBC by the Hampshire Police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) showed the interaction with Digwa after he had stabbed Nowak multiple times in the chest with a traditional Sikh knife, which he was permitted to carry under British law due to a religious exemption.
In the newly released footage, Digwa was heard repeating claims of racist abuse, including that Nowak had called him a “Paki”, a derogatory term for South Asians. Such claims were later exposed at trial to be scurrilous lies, as well as Digwa’s false accusation against Nowak of being “drunk”.
“He grabbed me, then started grabbing my turban, pulled my hair, started punching me and all this sort of stuff,” Digwa said.
The video shows an officer telling Digwa, “I’m not saying you’ve done anything,” as he questioned how Nowak had been stabbed.
“But I’ve been racially attacked,” Digwa protests, to which the officer responded: “I know, mate, I know.”
During the entire interaction released on Friday, no officer handcuffed Digwa, as they did to the dying Nowak.
Some have suggested that the staggered release of footage and transcripts has been done intentionally by police in order to prevent further unrest or public backlash against the failures of the police.
Former Met Police Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville told TalkTV on Friday that it appears that “Hampshire Police seem to be drip feeding this stuff over time instead of all at once, so we can almost forget about it, I suppose.”
Former DCI Neville went on to claim that the junior officers who responded to the attack were being set up as “sacrificial lambs” for the top brass, arguing that they were likely following protocols imposed from above.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has expressed similar concerns, previously saying that officers face punishment if they fail to prioritise accusations of racism.
The Brexit boss has argued that the anti-white Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology has infected the British state at all levels, including the police, who are thus incentivised to give favourable treatment to ethnic and religious minorities over the native white British population.
The latest release comes after an additional transcript was published on Wednesday showing that officers on the scene had failed to realise that Nowak had, in fact, been stabbed for nearly eight minutes.