A couple told how they had to remortgage their own home after they were suspended by the Post Office during the Horizon scandal.
Narrinder and Sushma Blaggan suffered racist abuse and had to pull their then eight-year-old daughter out of primary school after accounting discrepancies occurred at their Post Office branch in Litherland. The couple took over the Dale Acre Post Office branch in 1994, with Sushma working as the sub-postmistress and Narrinder running the retail side of the business.
But when the Horizon system was brought in to replace manual accounting, the couple started noticing thousands of pounds worth of shortfalls. Narrinder said they repeatedly asked for help from the Post Office but were ultimately left with no option but to pay for these shortfalls out of their own money.
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Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, based on faulty information from Horizon, a piece of accounting software that indicated money had gone missing. After 20 years, campaigners won a legal battle to have their cases reconsidered. To date, only 93 people have had their convictions overturned.
A public inquiry is ongoing into the Post Office Horizon scandal which was described by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history”. The scandal was brought back into the spotlight this month by the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
The Prime Minister said the government would bring in a new law to "swiftly exonerate" victims.
"My wife wouldn't talk to anybody, she wouldn't go out"
Sushma, 62, was suspended as sub-postmistress of Dale Acres Post Office in Litherland in 2004 due to accounting discrepancies. Narrinder said she was later given a community order which is yet to be overturned.
Narrinder was also suspended from his job as sub-postmaster of Monument Place Post Office on London Road in 2014. The 57-year-old said he's still trying to reach a settlement with the Post Office who offered him a £13,000 settlement on January 10 this week, which he has declined.
Narrinder told the ECHO: "We used to do everything by hand and we never had any problems at all. We used to always balance everything even to the penny.
"But when this Horizon system came in we noticed we were getting shortages and the only person that was working in the Post Office was my wife. When this Horizon system came in it went down alright for a bit and then all of a sudden it started showing shortages like £1,000.
"We used to have a retail side as well so I used to use my retail side to cover up the loss. Eventually it came to a point where my retail side was running out of stock, I couldn't fill it up because I was putting all of the money into the Post Office to cover the losses.
"My wife used to ring the Post Office and say I've got a shortage what should I do? And they said 'oh you've got to make it good.' I was putting the money into the Post Office side to cover the discrepancies."
In 2004, Narrinder said an auditor from the Post Office was sent out to check the accounts and found a shortfall of £8,000. Narrinder said his wife had to pay the shortfall out of her own money and was suspended immediately.
He said: "It was hard because she was that stressed out she wouldn't eat anything. She was thinking constantly where the money had gone.
"She was evicted and she had to do community service in Crosby at the Oxfam shop. She wouldn't talk to anybody, she wouldn't go out.
"People were saying 'you closed the Post Office you must have took some money out of that.' She couldn't face anybody."
"It felt like I was a prisoner in my own shop"
The couple, who have five children, struggled to put food on the table and resorted to watering down curry for dinner to make it last longer. They decided to pull their eight-year-old daughter out of school after she started falling victim to racist abuse due to the temporary closure of the Post Office.
Narrinder said: "She was crying every night saying 'I don't want to go to school'."
Narrinder carried on running the retail side of Dale Acres, while substitutes were called in to run the Post Office. During this time, Narrinder said he wasn't even allowed to go to the toilet unattended.
"Every time I went in they would follow me – the substitute postmaster. It felt like I was a prisoner in my own shop."
From 2009, Narrinder also worked as sub-postmaster of the Monument Place Post Office on London Road in Liverpool until he was suspended in 2014 At the time, he was paying around £1,000 a month to make up the shortfalls in the accounts.
When an auditor was called out to check the accounts, Narrinder said: "I was only £34 down so I gave them the £34. But they suspended me because of misconduct activities going on in my office.
"People were coming in and buying euros, foreign currency, and they had IDs and everything but they were using stolen cards.
"I rang the Post Office up and I said to them one day, I seem to be selling a lot of currency here can you make an inquiry. They said 'no everything is good don't worry about it, as long as you take the IDs.'"
Narrinder said he was told an inquiry would be carried out after he was suspended but he heard nothing of it after that. He was given six months to sell his branch of the Post Office and with no income coming in to pay off the £110,000 loan he'd taken out to buy it, he had to remortgage his home.
He is yet to agree on a settlement of compensation with the Post Office. Narrinder said: "I want my wife's name to be cleared. And I want for what I've been through and what they did to me, I want them to compensate me for that.
"What we've lived through with the Post Office – we were so stressed out. Every night my wife couldn't sleep.
"Now she's got high blood pressure, she's still on high blood pressure tablets, she's got migraines because she keeps thinking about what happened in the past."
A Post Office spokesperson said: "We fully share the aims of the current Public Inquiry, set up to get to the truth of what happened in the past and accountability. We are deeply aware of the human cost of the scandal and are doing all we can to right the wrongs of the past, as far as that is possible.
"Both Post Office and Government are committed to providing full, fair and final compensation for the people affected. To date, offers of more than £138 million have been made to around 2,700 Postmasters, the majority of which have been agreed and paid. Interim payments continue to be made in other cases which have not yet been resolved.”