Wrongly accused subpostmaster was asked to fork out £17,000 due to system faults
manchestereveningnews.co.ukA subpostmaster wrongly accused of false accounting has informed an inquiry of how he was left to deal with a £17,000 bill. Between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses (SPMs) were prosecuted based on information from the Horizon system, installed and maintained by Fujitsu.
But, in December 2019, a High Court judge ruled that Horizon's system contained a number of "bugs, errors and defects" and there was a "material risk" that discrepancies in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.
Baljit Sethi, 69, and his wife Anjana, 67, who have three children, initially ran a branch near Romford in Essex from 1983. Mr Sethi, the first witness to give evidence at an inquiry in central London, cried as he told how running it had been “the best time” of his life as he was popular in the community.
He told the inquiry: “We didn’t take a single penny from the Post Office our entire life.” The inquiry heard that Mr Sethi took on another branch in Brentwood in 2001 - after one year it showed a hole in the accounts of £17,000 which the couple were asked to pay out of their own pocket.
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