Henry Nowak was 18 when he was stabbed to death after a night out in Southampton last December, suffering four stab wounds before Hampshire Police officers handcuffed him at the scene while he was bleeding heavily.

The death of the white student is now at the centre of a trial at Southampton Crown Court, where Vickrum Digwa, a 23-year-old British Sikh, is accused of the killing. Digwa says he acted in self-defence after Nowak racially abused and assaulted him. Prosecutors allege Digwa removed his turban to make it appear that Nowak had pulled it off his head, while the victim's mobile telephone was later found in Digwa's pocket.

The case has taken on a wider charge because of what happened in the moments after the stabbing. Lord Daniel Hannan reacted by saying: “A man is stabbed to death by someone who accuses him of being a racist — and the first thing the police do on arrival is to handcuff the dying man.” That comment pushed the case beyond a courtroom dispute over self-defence and into a national argument about policing, race and judgment at a crisis scene.

That argument carries a heavy backdrop. The Macpherson Report, published in 1999 after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, found the Metropolitan Police liable for institutional racism in its handling of that case, and the memory of that finding still shapes how police decisions are read in Britain. Hampshire Police has so far not released a statement about its officers' actions in Nowak's case, leaving the force's conduct under scrutiny while the trial continues and key facts remain sub judice.

For Nowak's family, the central fact is already beyond dispute: he left for a night out and never came home. For the court, the unanswered question is narrower and sharper than the public debate around it — whether Digwa acted in self-defence, or whether prosecutors can prove he escalated a confrontation into murder and then tried to bend the scene to fit his account.