LONDON: England’s Court of Appeal on Thursday increased by four years the prison sentence imposed on a British Sikh for murdering a teenager in a racially tinged case that sparked public revulsion and protests.
The three-judge panel ratcheted up from 21 to 25 years the minimum life term Vickrum Digwa will serve for killing student Henry Nowak last year, ruling the initial sentence was unduly lenient. Nowak was handcuffed by police as he lay dying having been stabbed multiple times by Digwa, who falsely told officers he had been racially abused by the 18-year-old.
The high-profile case sparked violent demonstrations, stoked by anti-immigration figureheads such asReform UK leader Nigel Farage and US tech billionaire Elon Musk, who seized on it as evidence of supposed discrimination against white Britons.
Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, was also jailed for three years for trying to hide the ceremonial knife, of a type worn by Sikhs, used in the December attack in Southampton, southern England. The government’s legal team asked the appeals court to increase the sentence while Digwa had made a legal bid for it to be reduced.
‘A minimum term of 21 years did not adequatelyreflect the overall seriousness of the murder,’ chief judge Sue Carr said as she read out their decision. ‘It was not only lenient, but unduly so.’ She added the appeals court was quashing the 21-year minimum term and replacing it with a 25-year term which would be reduced by the 175 days Digwa had spent in custody on remand.
Nowak’s family members, who were present in court, welcomed the ruling but said there was ‘no reduction in our suffering’ and vowed ‘their fight for justice is far from over’. The UK government last week announced an independent review into the circumstances of the killing, which the family called ‘the first piece of good news’ since the murder and pledged to support.-AFP