SUB-POSTMISTRESS Seema Misra thought her son’s tenth birthday would be a good day.

Eight weeks pregnant with her second child, Seema dropped her son at school. As she kissed him goodbye, she told him his favourite curry would be waiting for him when he got home.

But Seema never made it home.

Instead she was sentenced to 15 months in prison for the theft of £74,000 from the Post Office. But the staggering £74,000 shortfall wasn’t her fault.

The faulty Horizon IT system was rolled out across all of the UK’s Post Offices in 1999, meaning it had been in operation and causing shortfall errors for six years before Seema took over the West Byfleet Post Office in 2005.

Horizon’s errors led to more than 700 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses being wrongly convicted for fraud and theft, with four even taking their own life.

Seema, now 47, said: “I lost everything. The Post Office took everything from me – my job, my dignity my life.”

Pregnant and in prison, Seema Misra was left on the brink of suicide after being wrongly convicted of false accounting and theft in 2010. 

She explained: “From the first day we had issues. When I checked the takings at the end of the day I realised we were £80 short.”

The recent ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office has caused nationwide outrage for what has been called the greatest miscarriage of justice in UK legal history. One scene shows Jo Hamilton on the phone with the Horizon helpline over a shortfall at her Hampshire branch. After going through each step at the direction of the helpline, the shortfall figure doubles before Jo’s eyes. 

This happened at the West Byfleet branch during Seema’s training.

“The man from the Post Office was teaching me how to work the system when the shortfall doubled right in front of us. When I asked him how to fix it, he shrugged it off, telling me to just call the helpline and they would know what to do. His hands were tied.”

Seema and her husband Davinder were told to balance the books themselves. They used takings from their shop, their own savings, with Seema even selling her jewellery to try to break even.

“We were screaming for help, but there was just no support. The Post Office told us again and again that we were the only ones having this issue. We were alone.”

After being in charge of the West Byfleet Post Office for three years, Seema was suspended after an audit carried out by the Post Office and was charged with theft and false accounting in 2008.

In 2010, on her son Aditya’s tenth birthday, her case came to court. She was pregnant after eight years of trying to conceive.

“I had faith in the system. I thought I would get justice because I knew I had done nothing wrong. I never thought I would get sent to prison.”

Seema fainted on hearing her 15-month sentence. That morning she had promised Aditya she would make him his favourite curry as a birthday treat, but she couldn’t even call him to tell him why she had broken her promise because she was in hospital. After she had recovered, Seema was sent to Bronzefield Prison in Ashford, Surrey, where she served four months before being released early for good behaviour.

“If I hadn’t been pregnant I would have killed myself,” Seema said. “I was living a nightmare. I feared for mine and my son’s life every day. There were people doing drugs everywhere and I was so scared all the time. I still get nightmares.” 

And while Seema was living a nightmare in prison, Davinder was also suffering. He was beaten up three times by people who believed he and his wife were thieves who had taken money from the elderly.

“He was pushed around outside the house,” said Seema. “But he didn’t want to make a big deal of it because he didn’t want our son to see his dad being beaten up.”

Despite being released from prison after four months, Seema was given a curfew and had to wear an electronic tag. 

She was wearing this tag when she gave birth to her second son Jairaj, now 12, in hospital in June 2011.

“I was so scared the police would burst in and arrest me the moment I gave birth because I was breaking curfew.”

Seema spent her labour in fear of arrest, sure she would be punished for breaking curfew and terrified the midwife would think she was a “terrible mother” because of her tag.

The family moved after Seema’s release but her conviction meant finding work was impossible and the family have suffered financially and mentally since their ordeal first started.

Seema was officially declared innocent when her conviction was quashed by appeal court judges in 2021.

But she is still fighting to get the compensation she deserves. 

“The Post Office and Royal Mail acted like the Mafia. They used dirty politics and I lost everything. I have been fighting for 18 years of my life, but we can’t let the Post Office get away with it,” she said.