The mother of murderer Vickrum Digwa has been jailed for three years for removing the knife used by her son to kill Henry Nowak from the crime scene.
Kiran Kaur was sentenced at Southampton Crown Court on Friday for assisting an offender on the night of the murder on December 3 2025 by taking the weapon back to the nearby family home.
The 53-year-old, of St Denys Road, Southampton, was found guilty by jurors who also convicted Digwa of murder and carrying a knife in public, following a trial in May.
Digwa, 23, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years on June 1 for the murder of the 18-year-old finance student, after falsely claiming Mr Nowak had racially abused him.
Sentencing Kaur, Judge William Mousley KC said: “A responsible parent would have challenged their son over their actions and encourage them to do the right thing.
“Instead you took the knife home and put it with a larger collection of ceremonial and other weapons in your son’s bedroom.
“That would have helped to conceal what it had been used for.
“This is because you wanted him to avoid being caught.”
The judge said her actions at Belmont Road before and after taking the dagger away “added to your son’s pretence that he had done nothing wrong and that he was the victim”.
He said her role added to the “degradation of Henry being arrested when he was dying”.
The court heard the knife was recovered after examination of CCTV, and determined by the police to be the murder weapon about a week after Mr Nowak was killed.
Prosecutor Nicholas Lobbenberg KC had told the court her role was “crucial” in removing the murder weapon at a time the police were coming to the scene.
He said: “The absence of weapon at the scene caused by her actions hampered the police attending who were, as your Honour will recall, were confronted with a wall of lies.
“She chose not to disclose what she had done.
“Absence of that weapon led to Henry dying terrified, alone and disbelieved, her actions contributed to this.”
Barrister Mark Watson, defending Kaur, said at the time of the incident Kaur only became involved after receiving a phone call that her son had been attacked, as she was getting ready for bed.
He said the mother was “equally misled” as Digwa lied to those around him about what happened.
He said what she did was a “spontaneous” act, not a calculated plan, adding: “The weapon was not destroyed, it was not cleaned, it was not broken up and hidden.”
The knife was still within its sheath, he added.
“Offending arose during a moment of panic and human frailty, the court may think,” he said.
He said the mother-of-five was a pillar of her family and community and showed positive good character before the incident, including through volunteer work, as he urged the judge to hand down a suspended sentence.
But the judge said when Digwa told her to take the murder weapon, sheath and belt away, “by then you knew or believed that he had stabbed and injured Henry”.
“Even if you might have believed that your son had been racially abused and assaulted, you knew there could be no justification for him to have stabbed Henry. Your son had no significant injury,” he said.
The judge acknowledged that Kaur is unlikely to reoffend and her actions were “mistakenly, to protect your son rather than for any personal gain”.
But Judge Mousley added: “However, the seriousness of your offending, requires you to be punished and others who might find themselves in a similar situation to be deterred from doing as you did.”
In his remarks, the judge set out the “devastating and lifelong impact” of Mr Nowak’s death on his family.
He described the first year university student as a “much-loved, kind, hard-working and ambitious young man devoted to his family and with a bright future”.
Kaur, aided by a Punjabi interpreter, appeared emotional in the dock, drying her eyes with tissues during her mitigation.
She has spent more than seven months in custody since her arrest.
Members of her family also attended the court hearing, supporting her from the public gallery.
Following Kaur’s sentence, Kelly Newman, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Digwa lied to police about Henry after carrying out the senseless act of violence and in the immediate aftermath, Kiran Kaur chose to help her son by removing the murder weapon in a deliberate attempt to obstruct the investigation and hide crucial evidence.
“Those who seek to help murderers evade justice should be in no doubt that they too will be held accountable for their actions.”
In the wake of Digwa’s case, anger erupted following the release of police body-worn video showing Mr Nowak, from Chafford Hundred, Essex, being placed in handcuffs moments before he became unconscious and subsequently died.
Violent disorder broke out in Southampton on June 2, with 27 people having been convicted over the trouble.
