'Appalling' false convictions for UK Post Office 'thefts' spur outrage

Source: The News International

LONDON: Public anger is mounting over what has been described as Britain´s biggest-ever miscarriage of justice that saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly convicted of theft because of a computer software glitch.

Lives were ruined by the false accusations that led to some Post Office branch managers being jailed, going bankrupt, losing their homes and their health. Four people took their own lives and dozens of those since exonerated died without seeing their names cleared.

Now, a TV drama telling the story of the subpostmasters´ ordeal at the hands of their own employer has generated a wave of sympathy for the victims. Critics hailed the four-part "Mr Bates vs The Post Office", broadcast last week, for humanising the ordeal of hundreds of people prosecuted for false accounting and theft between 1999 and 2015.

Far from being criminals, the subpostmasters -- pillars of their local communities -- had not stolen a penny. In fact they were the victims of flawed accounting software and the state-owned Post Office´s determination to defend it. Following the broadcast, a petition calling for former Post Office boss Paula Vennells to be stripped of an honour she received from Queen Elizabeth II has garnered more than a million signatures. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has described the scandal as an "appalling miscarriage of justice" that should "never have happened".