A former post office operator has come forward claiming she was told British Asian women were often pushed into theft as auditors urged her to confess to stealing £30,000 – a charge of which she was later cleared.
Before her trial in 1997, it was allegedly suggested to Kuldeep Kaur Atwal, then 46, that her cultural background may have played a role in her criminality and that she was likely to receive a custodial sentence unless she admitted to stealing from her branch.
A jury at Coventry crown court was subsequently instructed by the judge, Richard Cole, to return a not guilty verdict due to lack of evidence but the Post Office went on to demand that Atwal pay the money she had been falsely accused of taking.
Atwal, a mother of three, whose husband, Gurpal Singh Atwal, was a teacher, was contractually obliged to make good on shortfalls and had to quickly sell her branch for a fraction of its market value to pay off the debt.
Speaking to the Guardian, Atwal said the auditor’s alleged comment had made her angry at the time but she had felt powerless to respond.
The Post Office apologised last year after a document was discovered in which operators were categorised as “negroid types”, “Chinese/Japanese types” and “dark-skinned European types”. Other victims have claimed that racism fuelled the prosecutions, with one claiming that he was told by a staff member that “all Indians are doing it”.
Atwal said: “Looking back, I feel like saying they were bullies, to be honest. I lost my job and everybody judges you. The Post Office was so strong – everybody feared them. I felt for my husband more than anything with all the staff, all the students, looking down on him.”
The accounting system Atwal had been using in her branch in Coventry was a predecessor to the infamous Horizon IT software built by Fujitsu, whose faulty returns have led to the wrongful conviction of more than 900 people.
However, internal documents seen by the Guardian suggest the Post Office had also been aware of “serious problems” with the earlier system, known as Capture, prompting a series of software upgrades.
One advisory note about Capture that circulated in September 1995 advised that users could continue with the latest software upgrade but the problems encountered were more significant than they had initially understood and branches risked “data corruption problems”. A “large number” of offices were said to have been affected.
Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who has been prominent in the campaign for the post office operators, said he had been contacted by a number of people who believed the pre-Horizon system led to paper shortfalls in their accounts and persecution.
He said: “What makes me angry is that the Post Office knew all along about the problems with Horizon, and now they are not coming clean about the pre-Horizon system. The Capture system was full of bugs and errors.”
A Post Office spokesperson said: “We take very seriously the concerns raised about cases from before the Horizon system was first rolled out in 1999. We are investigating, including specific cases brought to our attention.”
Atwal was accused of stealing the money over a period from July 1995 until November 1996, when Post Office auditors made a morning visit to the branch.
“It was not unusual but after a couple of hours they said this branch will be closed for the rest of the day so I started thinking, ‘What’s going on?’” Atwal, 73, recalled. “They kept asking me whether I had had any accounting problems and I said, ‘No’. There had been a couple of occasions where there had been discrepancies but that was a few years back.
“They said, ‘We are short of £30,000, do you suspect anyone?’ I said, ‘I don’t, no.’ They said in that case you are responsible for it. One of the auditors commented to me as they were questioning me that ‘It is quite common in your society that women come under pressure to take money on the side, they don’t tell the family. Is someone putting pressure on you?’
“He meant being an Asian woman that the culture is such that the rest of the family puts the pressure on the woman [leading to theft]. I said, ‘Don’t be silly’. I didn’t think much of the remark at the time but I was angry, to be honest.”
Atwal, who had run the post office branch since 1989 without incident, said she was asked repeatedly whether anyone else in the family was involved in the business and whether she trusted her part-time staff. “They had been working with me for so many years so I did trust them,” she said. It was allegedly suggested by the auditors that if she admitted to being at fault that she may be able to avoid the harshest sanctions.
Atwal was subsequently interviewed by Post Office investigators. “There was no support at all from the Post Office side, just accusation after accusation,” she said. “They kept on telling me to plead guilty, saying I would be treated leniently if I did. ‘You are otherwise definitely looking to a custodial sentence’, they said. I said, ‘I haven’t done anything, I won’t admit to it’”.
Atwal appeared at Coventry crown court in August 1997. After three days of evidence, the judge said the Post Office had failed to provide any evidence of any shortfall in the accounts of agencies and clients. “They all said they had no complaints,” Atwal said. “But after the case the Post Office still wanted the money. I had no choice.”
