Great Post Office scandal

SUBPOSTMASTERS and mistresses, many of them Asian, are to receive compensation of £600,000 each because they were wrongly convicted of stealing money from the Post Office when, in fact, a new Japanese computer system called Horizon was at fault.

In what has been called “the biggest financial miscarriage of justice in British history”, Post Office bosses made a particular point of pursuing totally innocent Asians for many years.

Between 1999 and 2015, the government-owned Post Office Ltd prosecuted more than 700 postmasters for theft and false accounting. Its evidence came principally from data produced by the flawed Horizon computerised point of sale system.

In the worst case of wrongful and malicious prosecution, Seema Misra was jailed for 15 months even though she was pregnant.

Meanwhile, Post Office senior executives walked away with generous bonuses and honours, even after their errors were discovered. Many think they are the ones who should now be sent to prison.

Seema, who ran a subpostoffice in West Byfleet in Surrey, has explained how her life was nearly destroyed. “I have always been a spiritual person,” she said. “When I was convicted of theft in 2010, my faith and my belief in justice was shattered. I was pregnant at the time. My despair caused me to think of suicide. I wondered if God wanted me to have something in prison to worry about. Thoughts of my unborn child kept a bit of hope, and me, alive.

“I had come to England like many, believing Britain was a place of Ram Rajya which offered the opportunity to work, to thrive and to prosper.

“In 2005, (my husband) Davinder and I invested our own money in a Post Office branch and retail business. We were proud to have become part of such a famous British institution. When I was sentenced to prison on my eldest son’s 10th birthday, all our dreams and hopes were destroyed.”

Another victim, Harjinder Butoy, who ran a subpostoffice in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, and spent 18 months in prison, has said the compensation “is not enough”.

The scandal has been laid bare by Nick Wallis in his book, The Great Post Office Scandal: The fight to expose a multimillion pound IT disaster which put innocent people in jail.

He has spoken of his suspicions that Asian subpostmasters and mistresses were dealt with more harshly than their white counterparts. “Anecdotally, I think, non-white subpostmasters got bigger sentences,” Wallis has told me. “It’s the difference between, say, six and 12 months in prison.”

He referred to Butoy’s case – he was jailed for more than three years after a jury found him guilty in 2008. However, his conviction was later overturned by the Court of Appeal.

Wallis commented: “I mean Harjinder Butoy got three bl***y years. I don’t know anyone who’s got a sentence like that who is white – nowhere near it.”