Post Office Scandal: Public inquiry to examine wrongful convictions

The wrongful convictions of hundreds of sub-postmasters and mistresses will be examined by a public inquiry starting on Monday.

Between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 sub-postmasters were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting due to a flaw in a computer system Horizon.

A total of 72 former sub-postmasters have had their names cleared so far.

The cases constitute the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history

The inquiry - which is expected to run for the rest of this year - will look at whether the Post Office knew about faults in the IT system and will also ask how staff shouldered the blame.

It will also examine whether 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 data from it was used in court to convict sub-postmasters.

A judge will hear evidence on why sub-postmasters and postmistresses were singled out and whether they have been justly compensated.

Ahead of the inquiry, Baljit Sethi, who will be the first witness to give evidence on Monday, told the BBC he was looking forward to it.

"What the Post Office has done to us - and to many of my colleagues - is unforgiveable," he said. "The people who did this should be brought to justice."

His wife Anjana, who also helped run two branches near Romford in Essex, said she now felt "we can see some light at the end of this dark tunnel".

One branch had no problems at all, but the second one showed a hole in the accounts of

A public inquiry into how more than 700 Post Office workers were wrongly prosecuted for stealing company money begun on Thursday. The sub-postmasters were accused of theft and false accounting after discrepancies were found in Post Office accounts. Many were found guilty and spent time in prison.