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Indian-Origin Women Among 39 Ex-Postmasters Win Stealing Scandal Case In UK

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) chair Helen Pitcher said, "Every single one of these convictions has clearly had a profound and life-changing impact for those involved."

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Ayusmita Chatterjee
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Ex-Postmasters Accused Of Theft, case update: A group of 39 people who were convicted for allegedly stealing money and false accounting following the installation of a new computer system in local post offices in the UK, including postal managers of Indian origin, won a Court of Appeal case in the UK as their convictions were quashed.
These former sub-postmasters were accused of stealing funds from the UK's Post Office Ltd after being hit by a faulty IT system, called Horizon.
A High Court had approved a 57.8-million pounds settlement between hundreds of claimants and the Post Office in the year 2019, with many then left to overturn their convictions. Seema Misra and Vijay Parekh, among the 39 others, had maintained their innocence.
Misra was pregnant when she was wrongly handed a 15-month sentence 10 years ago after being accused of stealing 75,000 pounds after she took over her postion in Surrey in 2005. "I would definitely have killed myself if I hadn't been pregnant," Misra said.
Other Sub-postmasters had appealed their convictions on two grounds: that they had been denied a fair trial, and that the circumstances in which the prosecutions went ahead "represents an affront to public conscience".

A three-judge bench at the Royal Courts of Justice in London granted the appeal on both grounds.

Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde said, "Post Office Limited's failures of investigation and disclosure were so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the ''Horizon cases'' an affront to the conscience of the court."

He added, "the Post Office knew there were serious issues about the reliability of Horizon and had a clear duty to investigate the system's defects."
The judgement can impose more compensation on the Post Office if new civil cases for malicious prosecution is filed against them.
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Post Office chief executive Nick Read said, "I am in no doubt about the human cost of the Post Office's past failures and the deep pain that has been caused to people affected".
He added, "The quashing of historical convictions is a vital event in fully and properly addressing the past as I work to put right these wrongs as swiftly as possible and there must be coverage that reflects what has happened."
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) chair Helen Pitcher said, "Every single one of these convictions has clearly had a profound and life-changing impact for those involved." He added that the Post Office has rightly acknowledged the failures committed by them that have led to these cases.
UK post office stealing scandal