In a case of wrongful conviction in the UK, an Indian-origin woman and ex-postmistress in England served four-and-half years in jail when she was just eight months pregnant, giving birth to her youngest son inside the jail. Seema Misra is now 47, and her wrongful conviction for theft was finally quashed in April 2021.
Convicted of theft over a decade ago in 2008, Misra refused to accept the belated apology of her boss during her tenure as sub-postmistress. Her then-boss and MD of the same post office sent her an email apologising for wrong allegations against Misra leading her to four-and-half years of imprisonment when she was pregnant.
UK: Indian-Origin Ex-Postmistress Wrongfully Convicted Rejects Apology
Misra was a sub-postmistress in a post office branch in Surrey, England and was accused of stealing GBP 75,000 in 2008 and was subsequently sentenced to 15 months of imprisonment for the theft.
The conviction that was based on faulty accounting data from a computer system implemented by the Post Office, known as Horizon led to Misra's wrongful conviction that led to four and a half years of jail sentence for Seema when she was eight weeks pregnant, giving birth to her youngest son inside the jail.
The Court of Appeal ruled Misra was wrongfully convicted in April 2021 but by that time she had already served four and a half years in jail. The court acknowledged the flaws in the Horizon system and its role in the wrongful prosecutions of numerous postmasters.
After the recent inquiry held by the court in March to examine the failures in the post office that led to the scandal, David Smith, then-Managing Director of the post office offered his apology to Misra. Earlier he also sent a congratulatory email to Misra after her conviction was quashed in 2021.
However, this apology does not seem to convince Misra as she said to the BBC, "They need to apologise to my youngest son." She told the BBC "I was eight weeks pregnant when they jailed me. It was terrible. No one apologised when my conviction was overturned. Now, because there's a public inquiry, they suddenly realize they need to say sorry?"
There are hundreds of more postmasters alike Misra in the UK who have faced financial ruin and even imprisonment due to faulty software Horizon, developed by Japan's Fujitsu and adopted by the UK post offices around 1999. Misra's ordeal, however, highlights the human cost of this UK Post Office Scandal as many lives were shattered due to the post office's failure, for which the ongoing public inquiry is expected to end by July.
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