British Sikh man’s mother jailed over murder weapon cover-up

London: The mother of a British Sikh man imprisoned for fatally stabbing a white student was jailed by a court Friday for trying to hide the ceremonial knife used in the killing.

Henry Nowak was handcuffed by police in December as he lay dying, after his attacker, Vickrum Digwa, falsely claimed that he had been the victim of racial abuse.

Digwa, 23, was jailed for at least 21 years in June for stabbing Nowak to death using a ceremonial knife with a 21-centimetre (eight-inch) blade in the southern city of Southampton following an altercation about a mobile phone.

The case was seized on by far-right figures who claimed it was an example of so-called "two-tier policing", in which officers are seen as dealing with ethnic minorities more leniently.

Digwa's mother, Kiran Kaur, 53, was sentenced Friday at the southern Southampton Crown Court to three years in prison for taking the knife away from the scene, back to the family home.

"A responsible parent would have challenged their son over their actions and encourage them to do the right thing," judge William Mousley said.

"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."

Mousley added Kaur's actions "added to your son's pretence that he had done nothing wrong and that he was the victim".

Prosecutor Nicholas Lobbenberg told the court, that the "absence of that weapon led to Henry dying terrified, alone and disbelieved".

But her defence lawyer, Mark Watson, said Kaur's actions rose from a "moment of panic" after a late night call from Digwa.

"The weapon was not destroyed, it was not cleaned, it was not broken up and hidden," he said.