UK Sikhs defend right to carry sacred dagger after student murder backlash

Britain’s Sikh community has rejected calls to strip them of the rights to carry a ceremonial knife – known as the kirpan – as outrage snowballs over the murder of an 18-year-old student by a Sikh man. Vickrum Singh Digwa, 23, was handed a life sentence by a judge on Tuesday for stabbing to death Henry Nowak, an accountancy student, in Southampton in December 2025. The murder case has reopened a debate over race, religion and identity in the UK. Far-right figureheads, populist political leaders and even tech billionaire Elon Musk have joined a chorus alleging “two-tier” policing exists to protect ethnic minorities at the expense of the UK’s white majority population and called for the public wearing of the kirpan to be banned, in a country where carrying a weapon is illegal. Body camera footage released by police after Nowak’s stabbing shows him being handcuffed by officers despite telling them he has been stabbed and saying “I can’t breathe’’. In the footage, Digwa claims to the officers that he is a victim of a racial attack, and Nowak has ripped off his turban. The court heard that Digwa used a long, decorated dagger – not the smaller, curved kirpan – to kill Nowak after a confrontation. Under UK law, Sikhs may carry a sheathed and concealed kirpan in public. But once it is brandished, it is considered an offensive weapon. Nowak’s murder has thrust the right to carry a ceremonial dagger into the spotlight, with the Sikh community now facing a backlash from critics of the practice. Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing Reform party who is tipped by some as a leading candidate to be Britain’s next prime minister, has urged the country to respond to the murder with “pure cold rage’’ and end what he called “anti-white prejudice’’ inside Britain’s institutions. “Sikhs are permitted to carry as many and as large a weapon as they like on the streets of Britain without any good cause,” Farange said in a letter to the attorney general on Tuesday, as he called for Digwa’s sentence to be increased. ‘’There should not be a religious exemption, whereby murderers are punished more leniently if they use religious weapons as instruments of murder.’’ The kirpan has become the latest symbol used by some politicians to make their case that Britain’s legal system skews in favour of minority groups in a country where non-white citizens account for below 20 per cent of the population. Britain’s Muslim population has long been the focus of anger from members of the right and far-right. Sikhs fear they may now be next to face a backlash. Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi on Tuesday told parliament that Reform as well as the far-right were “attacking the Sikh community for wearing the kirpan and wanting it banned even though the kirpan was not used in this violent attack”. He said his community had been “thrown under the bus ... based on the actions of one violent murderer”. Other Sikh members of parliament hit back at what they said was the politicisation of the death of a young man, despite the express wishes of the victim’s father, Mark Nowak, who had called for his son’s murder to lead to safer streets but not to create “further division, hatred or tension”. Around 525,000 people were recorded as Sikh in the last UK census in 2021. Britain’s Sikhs have long taken pride in their success in the country and integration into British society – among the indicators, their home-ownership rate is higher than the national average. Many Sikhs have family members who have served in the British army, while Gurdwara kitchens are open to all faiths for free meals, provided by a group renowned for its service to the broader community. Not all turban-wearing Sikhs wear a kirpan – a symbolic dagger to protect the weak and is one of the so-called ‘five K’s’ of Sikhism – as it is carried mainly by baptised members of the faith. The community has roundly condemned Digwa’s actions, and prominent Sikh figures have urged politicians to ease the anti-Sikh rhetoric over an isolated tragedy. Nowak’s killer “chose to do what he did and for that he is solely responsible, but with that action he has brought the whole Sikh community into the spotlight”, said Jas Singh, a representative from the Sikh Federation in the UK. “It was his choice to draw a weapon and use it in an offensive manner ... that does not correlate with the tenets of the Sikh faith.’’ In a statement, City Sikhs, a 10,000-member charity, said it “utterly condemns the horrific murder of Henry Nowak”. But it said Digwa’s actions should not tarnish “one of the most well-integrated and law-abiding communities in the UK”. It added: “Calls to ban the kirpan in response to this murder risk unfairly targeting an entire community for the actions of a single criminal individual”.

UK Sikhs defend right to carry sacred dagger after student murder backlash

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Critics of the religious practice claim that a ‘two-tier’ policing framework protects British ethnic minorities at the expense of others

Critics of the religious practice claim that a ‘two-tier’ policing framework protects British ethnic minorities at the expense of others