A 23-year-old man, Vikrum Digwa, has been found guilty of murdering 18-year-old university student Henry Nowak following a fatal knife attack in Southampton.The court heard that Digwa used an eight-inch ceremonial blade, referred to as a ‘Shastar’, during the confrontation.

After the stabbing, Digwa falsely claimed that the victim had racially abused him, a claim which misled responding police officers into initially detaining the injured student as he lay dying in the street.

Mr Nowak, a first-year accountancy and finance student at the University of Southampton, had been returning home from a night out when he encountered Digwa.

Evidence presented at trial included video footage from the victim’s phone, which captured parts of the encounter and showed Digwa admitting he was “a bad man”.Prosecutors argued that Digwa had a longstanding interest in weapons and had trained with blades since childhood.Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, was also convicted of assisting an offender after she was found to have hidden the murder weapon following the attack.The prosecution described the false allegation of racism as a deliberate attempt to deflect responsibility for the stabbing.Following the verdict, Hampshire Police acknowledged their error in arresting the victim while he was mortally wounded and issued an apology.The case has also prompted an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct into the circumstances surrounding the response.The court rejected Digwa’s claims that he acted in self-defence, instead finding that he had unlawfully killed an unarmed young man.

The incident has been described as a tragic case involving both a violent street attack and serious procedural failings by those responding to the emergency.