UK Post Office scandal: Indian-origin former Post Office employee rejects apology
Updated: Jun 26th, 2024
An Indian-origin former employee of a Post Office in England rejected the apology of an engineer involved with the faulty accounting software that convicted her of money embezzlement while she was pregnant.
The case is related to the infamous Post Office scandal in the UK, remembered as one of the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history.
Seema Misra was imprisoned 12 years ago as she was accused of stealing £75,000 from her Surrey Post Office branch where she was working as sub-postmistress.
Misra received an apology from an engineer, Gareth Jenkins, who said that he did not know that Misra, now 47, was pregnant at the time.
This makes what has happened even more tragic. I can only apologise, again, to Mrs Misra and her family for what happened to her, stated Jenkins reportedly.
Following the apology, Misra reportedly rejected the apology, and told the British media that the apology from the engineer was coming ‘too little, too late’.
She reportedly told the media that no one could understand what she went through and the engineer could have apologised ‘ages ago’.
UK post office scandal
The UK Post Office scandal involved at least 700 post office managers who faced persecution by the post office between 1999 and 2015.
Many of them have spent years asserting their innocence, citing issues with a new accounting and stocktaking software program, developed by a Japanese IT company.
Some of the managers served prison sentences after being convicted of false accounting and theft, many of them were financially ruined, and some committed suicide.
The IT company is facing growing calls to compensate post office operators who were wrongly prosecuted based on data from its faulty accounting software.
The UK government has paid more than 148 million pounds to 2,700 victims so far across different compensation systems, according to a Japan-based newspaper.
Last year, the government said that each individual whose convictions were overturned would be entitled to £6,00,000 in compensation.
(With inputs from syndicated feed)
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