Kiran Kaur, 53, removed the knife from the scene and was condemned by a judge who said she did not act like a ‘responsible parent’ when she was sentenced at Southampton Crown Court on Friday
The mum of Henry Nowak’s murderer has been jailed for three years after she was convicted of assisting an offender the night her son attacked the tragic student.
Kiran Kaur, 53, removed the knife from the scene and took the murder weapon back to the nearby family home. She was found guilty by the same jurors who also convicted her son Vickrum Digwa of murder and carrying a knife in public after a trial in May.
She was condemned by a judge who said she did not act like a ‘responsible parent’ when she was sentenced at Southampton Crown Court on Friday.
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.”
Her son, 23, was jailed for life last month for murdering Henry, 18, who died in police handcuffs on a night out in December last year after a chance encounter with his assailant.
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. She was “equally misled” as Digwa lied to those around him, he said.
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.”
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.
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.