UK Post Office scandal: Indian-origin elderly battles for compensation

LONDON: An Indian-origin postmaster continues to battle for compensation, three years after his conviction was quashed in what is being remembered as one of the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history.

Vipin Patel, 70, who ran the Horspath Post Office in Oxford for five years, was among hundreds of employees falsely accused of theft and fraud by the Post Office over a 15-year period because of an accounting software glitch.

He was charged with stealing GBP75,000 from the Post Office, convicted of fraud, and given an 18-week suspended prison sentence in 2011, the Oxford Mail newspaper said.

Following a television drama on the scandal aired this month, the UK government said it would introduce new legislation to make sure the victims of the Post Office scandal are swiftly exonerated and compensated.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in the Commons that a new upfront payment of 75,000 pounds ($95,000) will be offered to a group of former postmasters who took their case against the Post Office to the High Court in 2019.

Patel's son, Varchas, said that his parents are "really pleased" that the television show raised public awareness, "but they are still battling for compensation".

"There has been no payment at all from the government despite my father’s conviction being quashed and the court saying my dad had no stain on his character. I’m angry it has taken a drama to speed things up but pleased as well -- a mixed bag of emotions," Varchas told the Oxford Mail.

Patel, whose conviction was quashed by Southwark Crown Court in 2020, has been left disabled and 'bedridden' after the years-long ordeal, according to his son.

“My dad's 70 and he’s been in hospital on two occasions in the past seven or eight months. He has a heart condition. I am concerned because of his bad physical health, we do not know what is around the corner," Varchas said.

Varchas was 23 when Patel was prosecuted and remembers seeing a prison officer come upstairs to the flat and put an ankle tag on his father.

The UK government paid more than 148 million pounds to 2,700 victims so far across different compensation systems, according to a Nikkei Asia report.

Last year, the government said that each individual whose convictions were overturned would be entitled to 600,000 pounds in compensation.

The scandal involved at least 700 post office managers who faced prosecution 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 called Horizon, developed by Fujitsu, a Japanese IT company.

Some of the managers served prison sentences after being convicted of false accounting and theft, and many of them were financially ruined, and some committed suicide.

Fujitsu is facing growing calls to compensate post office operators who were wrongly prosecuted based on data from its faulty accounting software.