The Court of Appeal has raised Vickrum Digwa’s minimum term to 25 years after ruling his 21-year sentence for murdering Henry Nowak was too lenient. The judges also refused Digwa permission to appeal against the sentence.
Nowak, an 18-year-old student, was stabbed to death in Southampton in December 2025. The appeal court said the original sentence did “not adequately reflect the overall seriousness of the murder”.
The Court of Appeal ruling
Jonathan Polnay KC argued that the 21-year minimum term was too lenient. He said Digwa used a large dagger, abused the religious exemption to carry it, and behaved in a way that made the offence more serious as Nowak lay dying.
Imran Khan KC argued the 21-year term was too long. He said the trial judge counted overlapping aggravating factors more than once, which pushed the sentence beyond what the facts justified.
Lady Chief Justice on the sentence
The Lady Chief Justice said the trial judge was entitled to start at 15 years. She also said the judge found Digwa did not take the large kirpan to the scene intending to commit a crime.
But the appeal court said the knife’s later use changed the sentencing picture. The Lady Chief Justice said: “The fact that the knife’s initial carriage had been lawful does not reduce the seriousness of its subsequent unlawful use.”
How the term moved
The judges said that, before aggravating and mitigating factors, Digwa’s offending merited 23 years. They then said the aggravating factors took the sentence to at least 27 years, with filming Nowak as he lay dying and his mother removing the weapon among the factors weighed by the court.
The result is that Digwa’s original 21-year minimum term has been quashed and replaced with a 25-year sentence. For Nowak’s family, the ruling closes the argument over whether the original punishment properly reflected the killing and the weapon use, while leaving the court’s sharper view of the offence on the record.
