Seema Misra, former manager of the West Byfleet post office, convicted in the British Post scandal, at her home in Knaphill, on January 12, 2024 in the United Kingdom (AFP/HENRY NICHOLLS)
Wrongly convicted like hundreds of others in the British Postal scandal, Seema Misra was jailed when she was two months pregnant. She said she would have ended her life if she had not been expecting her second child.
Now aged 48, in 2005 Seema Misra took over as head of the small post office in West Byfleet, a village in Surrey about fifty kilometers southwest of London.
Her very first day ends with a deficit of 80 pounds sterling in the till, she tells AFP in her home in Woking. The trainer wants to be reassuring, maintaining that “it is never to the nearest cent”, she says.
“But why wouldn’t it be to the nearest cent? Money comes in, money goes out, it should balance out,” she asks herself.
The following week resulted in a deficit of 200 pounds. Which increases to 400 after manipulation in the computer system recommended by telephone assistance.
time passes, deficits widen. The Post Office turns a deaf ear, attributing accounting errors to it.
The name of the real culprit: Horizon, the software of Japanese IT giant Fujitsu (AFP/Archives/JUSTIN TALLIS)
An audit, an investigation and prosecution for theft followed: in the end, Seema Misra was blamed for a hole in the cash register of nearly 75,000 pounds sterling.
The name of the real culprit: Horizon, the software from Japanese IT giant Fujitsu. But it will take years before the Post Office recognizes the dysfunctions.
– Childbirth under electronic bracelet –
Around 900 postal workers were convicted. “One of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the history” of the United Kingdom, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recognized this week, after a television series devoted to the scandal, which aroused an immense wave of sympathy for the victims.
Seema Misra, former manager of the West Byfleet post office, convicted in the British Post scandal, at her home in Knaphill, on January 12, 2024 in the United Kingdom (AFP/HENRY NICHOLLS)
Seema Misra had pleaded guilty to falsification of accounts, for having put her signature on inaccurate balance sheets, but not guilty of theft.
“Until November 10, 2010, I was confident that I would get justice, that everything would be okay.” But on that day, her eldest son’s 10th birthday, she was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Seema Misra loses consciousness hearing the sentence, wakes up in hospital. She will then be incarcerated.
“If I hadn’t been pregnant, I would have killed myself for sure.”
At least four suicides have been recorded in this case.
She will spend four months behind bars, then four months under an electronic bracelet, even during childbirth. “I wondered what the midwife might think about the kind of mother I was going to be,” she says. She fears being re-incarcerated for violating her curfew. “These are the kinds of things I had in mind when giving birth to my child.”
For years, she had to borrow from relatives. She sold her small post office at a loss and had an apartment she bought in London confiscated.
Her family suffered “financially” because Seema Misra could no longer work because of her conviction, but also “mentally”.
“There are so many things, like the moments with the children that we couldn’t enjoy because of the scandal”, “dignity”, “our confidence”, “we can’t put a price on that” , she says.
– The suffering of the innocent –
Seema Misra’s conviction will finally be overturned in 2021, just like those of around forty of her colleagues.
Seema Misra, former manager of the West Byfleet post office, convicted in the British Post scandal, at her home in Knaphill, on January 12, 2024 in the United Kingdom (AFP/HENRY NICHOLLS)
This post office “could have been our adventure”, “I wanted a kind of empire”, “all that was broken”, regrets Seema Misra, who arrived from India in 1994.
“We could have closed everything and returned to India, but we decided not to because we came here with the hope of a better life for our family”, and this whole affair “is not not our fault,” said this determined woman with long black hair.
“Angry” at the Post Office, which could have solved this problem “ages ago” and “made innocent people suffer”, she wants to see those responsible for the scandal “behind bars”, have their property confiscated, that their bonuses be used to compensate the victims.
While welcoming the announcement in recent days of a new law to exonerate and compensate wrongly convicted postal workers, she insists that the government must make this promise a reality quickly.
“We must show the world that we are a developed country, that the system works,” she says.
© 2024 AFP
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