A FORMER subpostmaster has told how his life fell apart when he was wrongly jailed during the Post Office scandal.
Harjinder Butoy was convicted of stealing more than £200,000 due to computer issues.
The 45-year-old ran the Sutton-in-Ashfield post office with his wife in Ashfield, Notts, until he was arrested, charged and then jailed for three years and three months in 2008 for “stealing” £208,000.
Mr Butoy said that when the guilty verdict came in “I just fell apart,” adding: “I wasn’t prepared for it”.
Mr Butoy was among more than 700 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses (SPMs) prosecuted between 2000 and 2014 – based on wrong information from the Horizon IT system, installed and maintained by Fujitsu.
In December 2019 a High Court judge ruled Horizon contained “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.
The High Court overturned Mr Butoy’s conviction, along with those of 38 other former postmasters, in April last year.
Speaking to an inquiry into the scandal earlier today, Mr Butoy said his family were “destroyed” by the false conviction.
He said between 2004 and 2007, his branch had no problems passing the Post Office’s audits – and was even signed off on an audit without any issues a week before his arrest.
But on April 24, 2007, he was detained by cops after it was found in an audit there was £208,000 missing from his branch.
Mr Butoy said he felt “shocked”, “confused” and “ashamed” as customers watched him being hauled off by CID officers.
In September 2008, he faced trial at Nottingham Crown Court where he maintained his
innocence and questioned whether the Horizon information was correct- but the Post Office insisted it was “100 per cent robust”.
He was jailed for three years and three months – thought to be one of the largest
sentences among the Horizon cases – and was given a £60,000 confiscation order.
Mr Butoy went on to describe his “terrible” ordeal in prison, where he lost more than six stone and was “stressed every day”.
“I kept thinking how did I end up here? Just thinking about my family,” he said.
The 45-year-old said it was “awful” for his wife and three children, who had to move in with his parents in Chesterfield after shutting down the business.
“It was the same for them as it was for me – we all got destroyed,” he said. Mr Butoy said he ended up filing for bankruptcy as he struggled to pay back the £60,000.
“Everything has just fallen apart for me. I have no confidence in myself anymore,” he said.
He added: “I had a really good reputation with the public and then I just lost it by the click.”
On what he wants from the Post Office now, he said: “I want somebody to go to prison.”
The inquiry, which is expected to run for the rest of this year, is looking into whether the Post Office knew about faults in the IT system and will also ask how staff were made to take the blame.
Jason Beer QC, counsel to the inquiry, said during his opening that the ordeal of those affected could be concluded as “the worst miscarriage of justice in recent British legal history”.
