Vickrum Digwa has been jailed for life, with a minimum term of 21 years, for the murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak.
Digwa was sentenced at Southampton Crown Court on Monday.
The 23-year-old stabbed Mr Nowak to death with a Sikh ceremonial knife, called a kirpan, on 3 December 2025.
He was filmed by his victim as he told him “I am a bad man” moments before the knife attack, which included two stab wounds to the back of Mr Nowak’s legs and a fatal wound to his heart.
Digwa was also earlier convicted of carrying a bladed weapon in public.
His mother, Kiran Kaur, 53, was found guilty of assisting an offender by removing the weapon from the scene. She will be sentenced on 17 July.
During his trial, Digwa claimed that Mr Nowak, whom he described as drunk, had racially abused him before punching him and knocking his turban off.
He said he had stabbed Mr Nowak in the back of his legs in self-defence after Mr Nowak had threatened him and grabbed him by the hair.
He claimed that he had not realised at the time that he had caused the fatal stab wound to Mr Nowak’s chest.
But the prosecution said Digwa had told a “wicked lie” to police who attended the scene, by telling them he had been the victim of a racist attack.
He also “lied” by telling officers that he had not stabbed Mr Nowak, despite the student’s pleas for help as he told the police he was injured.
This led the officers to arrest Mr Nowak and put him in handcuffs moments before he collapsed and became unconscious. He then died despite their efforts to give him first aid.
The police have since apologised for handcuffing Mr Nowak.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk posted on X an offer to fund a private prosecution against the police, while the Independent Office for Police Conduct is investigating the circumstances of the incident.
In court on Monday, Mark Nowak, the father of Henry Nowak, broke down in tears as he read his victim impact statement to the court in which he described the family’s devastation at the loss of his “beautiful son”.
He said: “As a father, it is my job to protect my child and I failed to keep him safe, I was not there when he needed me most, the thought of him lying in the road, scared, bleeding to death will haunt me forever.”
Henry’s mother Lucy described her son as “ambitious, determined and full of life”.
“He had his whole life ahead of him, that future has been cruelly taken away,” she said.
“The impact of his loss has been devastating not only for me but for our entire family and for all who knew him, we are learning to support one another through this unimaginable grief, but the pain is constant, our family will never be the same.”
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