Former Sutton postmaster wrongly imprisoned for theft ‘wants someone on the other side jailed’

Harjinder Butoy was one of hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting between 2000 and 2014 – before it was revealed the problem was down to a flaw in a computer system.

In 2008, a jury found the dad-of-three guilty of stealing more than £200,000 from the accounts of Forest Side sub-post office in Sutton, which he ran with his wife Balbinder.

He was jailed for three years and four months, spending 18 months behind bars.

However, his conviction was finally overturned at the Court of Appeal last year.

He is one of 72 former sub-postmasters to have had their names cleared so far, in what has been described as the biggest miscarriage of justice in recent history.

Faults

Now, ahead of a public inquiry into the wrongful convictions, Mr Butoy said he wanted to see ‘someone on the other side to be charged and jailed like I was’.

He told the BBC: “They are the ones who signed the final paperwork off.

“They are the ones who knew if there were any faults on the system or not.”

The inquiry will investigate if the Post Office knew about faults in the IT system and why staff shouldered the blame.

It will also examine if staff at software firm Fujitsu, which developed the Horizon software to complete tasks such as transactions, accounting and stocktaking, knew the system had flaws while its data was used as evidence in court.

Mr Butoy, who is set to give evidence to the inquiry on Wednesday, told the BBC he noticed the Horizon accounting software was not adding up properly.

“I was £500 short,” he said, even though a supervisor had been with him the entire time. “I didn't think anything of it. But ever since then, it happened a lot.”

The Post Office has said it is ‘sincerely sorry’ for the impact of the scandal and it is ‘in no doubt about the human cost’.

It said: “In addressing the past, our first priority is that full, fair and final compensation is provided and we are making good progress.”

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