‘I got tarred overnight’: how Post Office Horizon scandal turned victims’ lives upside down

Seema Misra, a former post office operator who was cleared of theft from the Post Office after being convicted and jailed in 2010. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

The Post Office’s pursuit of 3,500 post office operators over 16 years with wrongful allegations of theft, fraud and false accounting has had a life-changing impact on those targeted.

Despite knowing there were faults with the Horizon accounting software that the operators were using, more than 900 were prosecuted and at least four suicides have been linked to the scandal.