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PRISON HELL
Post Office scandal left me locked up pregnant in jail with screaming drug addicts after I was accused of stealing £74k
Senior Post Office lawyer even celebrated putting pregnant Seema behind bars
AS Seema Misra left home, she kissed her son goodbye and told him she would be back later to cook his favourite meal for his birthday.
But the subpostmistress - eight weeks pregnant with her second child - was forced to break her promise to 10-year–old Aditya when she was sentenced to 15 months in prison, after Post Office bosses accused her of stealing £74,000.
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However, the shortfall was actually caused by the faulty Horizon IT accounting system, which led to more than 700 sub-postmasters and mistresses being prosecuted - with four going on to take their own lives.
And it was later revealed a senior Post Office lawyer actually celebrated putting pregnant Seema behind bars, telling bosses that they had "destroyed the attack on the Horizon system".
Described as the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history, it is now the subject of a new ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which tells how a group of wrongfully-accused Post Office workers fought back in a bid to clear their names.
The show features an all-star cast, including Katherine Kelly, Julie Hesmondhalgh and Toby Jones as the title role of Alan Bates, a former subpostmaster in Craig-y-Don, Conwy, who led the campaign for justice.
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Seema, now 47, ended up serving four months in prison, and when she gave birth to her second son, Jairaj, in hospital after her release, she was still wearing her electronic probation tag.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, the mum-of-two recalls: “I’d been warned there was a chance I could be jailed.
“But I honestly just couldn’t see for a second how I could be punished like that for something I hadn’t done. I had faith in the justice system, at that point.
“When the judge said I’d been sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment, I passed out.”
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And she adds: “If I hadn’t been pregnant, I would have taken my own life. I was at rock bottom.”
'I even sold my jewellery'
Seema, who is married to Davinder, 51, took over the Post Office in West Byfleet, Surrey, in 2005 and noticed the Horizon computer system showed a shortfall of £80 on her first day of training.
She recalls: “The trainer told me the accounts were never exact, and that I should just balance the books with money from the shop till."
“I didn’t really understand why they wouldn’t tally, especially when it happened again the next day, but the trainer just shrugged it off.”
Her books repeatedly failed to tally with her takings. She says: “I started suspecting everybody, and I was desperately trying to pay back the missing money – I even sold some of my jewellery.”
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In 2008, Seema was suspended after an audit carried out by the Post Office and was charged with theft and false accounting.
Her case came to court in 2010, by which time she was pregnant after eight years of trying to conceive.
Recalling the morning of her sentencing at Guildford Crown Court, she says: “I dropped my son off at school - it was his tenth birthday - and said: 'I'll make you your favourite curry tonight, we'll have a celebration.' It was good for me to have something to look forward to as well.
“I never believed for a second that I wouldn't be there for him that night. I had faith in the justice system, at that point.”
Seema served her sentence in Bronzefield Prison in Ashford, Surrey, with former inmates including Rose West, and paedophile Vanessa George.
She says: “Being pregnant in prison was horrendous.
“It was everything I had imagined and worse. It was unclean, I felt I had limited antenatal care, and I was constantly terrified someone would attack me. I’d convince myself someone was going to stab me and kill my baby.
“I’d gone from being a pillar of the community to a thief who was stealing money from old people. I never in a million years would have imagined I would have ended up in prison.
Her husband also found himself ostracised by friends, and even beaten up by strangers after his wife’s picture appeared on the front page of their local paper.
She says: “He didn’t tell me he had been attacked. He turned up to every visit he was allowed to but he didn’t tell me anything that was going on at home.”
Davinder was forced to sell the family shop, in negative equity, and started up a taxi firm, which he then had to give up because he struggled to work around looking after Aditya, now 23.
'Living nightmare'
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Speaking about those who she was locked up with, Seema says: “I had no idea what the other inmates had done, but they terrified me. So many of them were taking drugs, and whispering about human trafficking. So many of the women were self-harming.
“All night I would lie there awake, listening to them screaming and shouting.
"I didn't trust anyone. I just kept my head down, avoided eye contact, and focused on my baby and my family, and getting home to them.
"The whole experience was a living nightmare."
She gave birth to Jairaj, now 12, in hospital in June 2011.
In December 2019, a judge ruled the Horizon system was riddled with bugs in a landmark High Court judgement and the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry started in 2020.
It is still ongoing and, in May 2023, the shocking admission from senior Post Office lawyer, Jarnail Singh, came to light after the public inquiry was shown an email sent by him to a series of executives, celebrating Seema’s conviction.
'They played with my life'
The email described how her case had been "an unprecedented attack on the Horizon system", adding: "Through the hard work of everyone…we were able to destroy to the criminal standard of proof every suggestion made by the defence."
Speaking in response to the email at the time, Seema, whose conviction was eventually quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2021, told The Times: "They didn't realise they were playing with my life, a mum's life, a wife's life. Even someone with a heart of steel wouldn't do that.
"They cannot be human, and yet they kept doing it.
"The bosses are still free, they have their families, while I was in prison."
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There is also an accompanying documentary, which airs on January 4, to coincide with the drama.
Seema says: “I think it’s a good thing that the scandal is being brought to people’s attention, and it is finally getting the coverage it deserves.
“But I worry that the drama doesn’t go far enough – it doesn’t do enough to explain how many people were involved in this and the fight so many of us have had to come together for justice.
“It has been a team effort – the Post Office tried to keep us in the dark and made us feel stupid – that we were the only ones having problems.
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“People have to realise there were almost 700 people involved in this, not just one.”
Mr Bates vs the Post Office is on ITV1 and ITVX is on January 1, 2, 3 and 4 at 9pm
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