A former subpostmistress in the UK who was wrongly jailed while pregnant has rejected an apology from an engineer whose evidence helped convict her.
Seema Misra, who was jailed due to faulty accounting software, rejected apologies from former Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins and ex-Post Office managing director David Smith, whose evidence and actions contributed to her wrongful imprisonment over 12 years ago.
Her conviction was finally overturned in April 2021. Mr Jenkins, who only recently apologised, claimed he was unaware of her pregnancy at the time.
Ms Misra criticised this apology as insufficient and delayed. She told the BBC during the ongoing public inquiry into the scandal that the apology of Mr Jenkins was “too little, too late”.
Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office wrongly prosecuted approximately 700 sub-postmasters for theft and fraud based on inaccurate data from their IT system.
Speaking of the ordeal she had to go through, she noted: “Nobody can understand it” and stated that Mr Jenkins could have apologised “ages ago”.
Earlier, Ms Misra also dismissed Mr Smith’s apology for a congratulatory email sent after her conviction, which he now acknowledges was inappropriate.
“It was intended to be a congratulatory email to the team, knowing that they had worked hard on the case,” Mr Smith said in his written evidence to the inquiry.
“However, knowing what I do now, it is evident that my email would have caused Seema Misra and her family substantial distress to read and I would like to apologise for that… Even if this had been a correct conviction, I would absolutely never think that it was ‘brilliant news’ for a pregnant woman to go to prison and I am hugely apologetic that my email can be read as such,” he said.
“However, seeing this email in the light of what I know now, I understand the anger and the upset that it will have caused and sincerely apologise for that,” he added.
Ms Misra said in April this year: “I was eight weeks pregnant – they need to apologise to my youngest son. It was terrible. I haven’t accepted the apologies. We had my conviction overturned, nobody came at that time to apologise. And now they just suddenly realised that when they have to appear in a public inquiry, they have to apologise.”
Ms Misra’s case was used as a “test case” for the faulty Horizon IT system, leading to more wrongful convictions. Mr Jenkins’ evidence about the Horizon system was used in the prosecutions of many subpostmasters including Ms Misra, who received a 15-month prison sentence while eight weeks pregnant in November 2010.
Previous witnesses to the inquiry have claimed Mr Jenkins may have committed perjury due to his failure to disclose knowledge of bugs in the Horizon system to the subpostmasters.
Mr Jenkins made personal written apologies to some of the subpostmasters and said he was “truly sorry” for Mrs Misra’s wrongful conviction.
He said: “I would like to make clear that I feel deeply affected by the cases I played a part in. I have wanted to explain my part in them.
“I have apologised to those individuals who were wrongly convicted in the case studies I have addressed and I repeat again how sorry I am.”
