{"id":627974,"date":"2026-06-08T18:59:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/627974\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T18:59:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:59:15","slug":"sikh-group-calls-for-public-inquiry-into-henry-nowaks-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/627974\/","title":{"rendered":"Sikh group calls for public inquiry into Henry Nowak’s death"},"content":{"rendered":"

“A wider inquiry must establish why this critical intelligence failed to inform the responding officers’ risk assessments, and whether systemic biases contributed to the immediate criminalisation of a dying victim,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

During the sentencing hearing, Judge William Mousley KC said the pathology evidence had shown that Nowak would not have survived, “however quickly he received first aid, CPR or expert medical treatment”.<\/p>\n

A full inquest into the death of Nowak<\/a> is due to open at Winchester Coroner’s Court with a jury on 20 September 2027.<\/p>\n

It will look at whether any “act or omission by a police officer” caused or contributed to his death.<\/p>\n

Hampshire coroner Jason Pegg said at the inquest opening that while the crown court trial and conviction of Nowak’s killer, Digwa, had largely established “how” the teenager died, he needed to be satisfied there was “sufficient reason” to explore his death further.<\/p>\n

He decided there was.<\/p>\n

His justifications included the “significant scrutiny and comment” and public interest after the details of Nowak’s death were revealed and the fact he had been arrested and was “in the custody of the state” when he died.<\/p>\n

He also concluded the “right to life” legal obligations in Article 2 of the Human Rights Act had been triggered in this case.<\/p>\n

He stressed it was important Nowak’s family be able to scrutinise the events of that night and participate in any proceedings and an inquest would allow such scrutiny – for them and the public.<\/p>\n

The issue of a coroner’s duty to “identify risks to life” was also mentioned, so potential future deaths could be prevented.<\/p>\n

Hampshire’s chief constable Alexis Boon has previously apologised to Nowak family<\/a>, telling them “I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through this”.<\/p>\n

He also said that he would not pre-judge the outcome of the IOPC investigation into the circumstances of the police response.<\/p>\n

The IOPC has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“A wider inquiry must establish why this critical intelligence failed to inform the responding officers’ risk assessments, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-627974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}