A ‘wrongly convicted’ victim of the Post Office scandal has made the shocking claim that the Post Office urged him to sign a confession to stealing money or he would face losing his children.
Former sub-postmaster Senepathy Narenthiran, 68, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2008 after the Horizon IT system showed that the accounts of the Walthamstow branch, in East London, had plunged into a £275,000 hole.
Mr Narenthiran first noticed shortfalls in his accounts in the autumn of 2005. By the following year, he was suspended by the Post Office during an investigation which ended with him being jailed in 2008.
Shockingly, the father-of-two has claimed Post Office auditors were ‘dictating exactly’ what to write in a damning confession to theft, after being told he ‘would not get a chance to see [his children]’ if he refused to sign it.
Mr Narenthiran said he has been unsuccessful in getting his conviction quashed after being told by several law firms that his signed confession to stealing money, which he denies, had sealed his fate.
Former sub-postmaster Senepathy Narenthiran, 68, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2008 after the Horizon system showed there was a shortfall of £275,000
The former sub-postmaster said that he desperately attempted to plug the gargantuan shortfall with funds from credit cards after being advised by the Post Office’s helpline to make the accounts ‘look good’, assuring him that the issue would be resolved the next day.
However, the gaps in the accounts began to spiral and Mr Narenthiran said that he was soon finding that shortfalls of £5000 were surging to £50,000.
Mr Narenthiran told : ‘I haven’t got a clue how it was happening. I never even told my wife because I didn’t want to put on pressure.
‘But gradually, I was working like a zombie and I didn’t have any sort of way out’.
Devastatingly, Mr Narenthiran’s marriage came to an end in May last year, and he moved out of the family home in Wood Green, north London, losing contact with his daughter, 26, and son, 30.
Mr Narenthiran met his wife, who was also the sub-postmistress at the same branch, but did not handle day-to-day business, in 1989.
The couple married the following year and were together for over 30 years – ‘a hell of a long time,’ Mr Narenthiran reflected.
He now lives above a restaurant, in a flat in Ramsgate, Kent, where he hopes to rebuild his life.
The former sub-postmaster said that he desperately attempted to plug the shortfall with funds from credit cards after being advised by the Post Office to make the accounts ‘look good’
The father-of-two now lives above a restaurant, in a flat in Ramsgate, Kent, where he hopes to rebuild his life
When Mr Narenthiran attempted to explain that there was an issue with the Horizon IT system to the auditors, he was told that the IT software was ‘100 percent okay,’ before accusing the former sub-postmaster of stealing money.
A public inquiry into the scandal is due to resume evidence hearings this week, with witnesses for Fujitsu – the company behind the software – expected to appear later this month.
Mr Narenthiran urged the auditors to look at the call he’d made to the helpline, but his explanation was swatted away and he was instructed to write the confession.
Mr Narenthiran told the : ‘I gave up. I said, ‘what do you want me to write? Whatever you want, you tell me, I will write it”
ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office has reignited national interest in the scandal after viewers were left outraged by events portrayed in series based on the real-life story of postmaster Alan Bates, played by actor Toby Jones, who led the campaign to expose what is considered the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history.
The series showed Fujitsu staff changing figures in what was claimed to have been a ‘secure’ £1billion IT system – without the knowledge of sub-postmasters who used the software.
Mr Bates was among hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters working in the UK who were accused and later charged of theft, fraud and false accounting due to the faulty Horizon system.
Mr Narenthiran, who is originally from Sri Lanka, came to the UK in the 1980s and said investigators even checked for any assets he may own in the South Asian country.
He added: ‘I’d never been to a police station, even for a traffic offence. And when they took me to the police station, and the police was waiting outside for nearly 3 and a half hours, I was thinking, ‘what’s going on?’
‘And they locked me up, and I stayed overnight. My wife and sister came and bailed me out’.
During his trial at Kingston Crown Court, Mr Narenthiran found himself isolated in proving his innocence, saying: ‘Out of my jury, only one did not support the [guilty] verdict.
‘But the rest of them went along with it because the Post Office is like a shrine – even I used to believe in the Post Office as a shrine.
‘My own lawyer didn’t believe me. I told him if I took £275,000, I would be sitting in the Bahamas and sipping champagne. I wouldn’t be sitting here and working.’
After serving approximately a year-and-a-half of his sentence in jail, Mr Narenthiran was released early from custody, placed on a curfew and ankle-tagged.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Rishi Sunak revealed the option of exonerating all postmasters was being ‘looked at’ by the Justice Secretary
Sue Knight, a postmistress who lost everything after she was wrongly accused of theft, made an appearance on the BBC’s Sunday politics show
Mr Chalk is said to be looking at how to remove the Post Office from the process whereby any wrongful convictions are quashed
Mr Bates (pictured) was among hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters working in the UK who were accused and later charged with theft, fraud and false accounting
Before his life was wrecked by the scandal, Mr Narenthiran said that he worked hard from the day he moved to the UK, working 12 to 15 hours a day.
Eventually, he built himself a small but prosperous empire with two other retail businesses and a second home that he rented out.
He said: ‘Everyday, I would get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, go to the shops and the post office. That was my life’.
Shortly after being released from prison, Mr Narenthiran suffered a heart attack despite never having any had any previous heart conditions, and said that his health had deteriorated as a result of the scandal.
Only 93 of an estimated total of more than 700 convicted postmasters have had their convictions quashed, while 54 cases brought by former postmasters have failed to have convictions overturned. There are only five further cases currently before the Court of Appeal.
Under current rules, the CPS can take over the handling of a private prosecution appeal if there is ‘clearly no case to answer’ or if the prosecution is ‘clearly likely to damage the interests of justice.’
More than 700 Post Office branch managers were handed criminal convictions after faulty Fujitsu accounting software, known as Horizon, made it appear as though money was missing from their outlets.
It has been described as the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history and a public inquiry into it is ongoing.
Last night it was revealed there may be dozens more victims of the Horizon scheme due to an earlier rollout in 1995.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Rishi Sunak revealed the option of exonerating all postmasters was being ‘looked at’ by the Justice Secretary Alex Chalk.
Mr Chalk is said to be looking at how to remove the Post Office from the process whereby any wrongful convictions are quashed, with powers potentially being handed to the Crown Prosecution Service instead.
Sue Knight, a postmistress who lost everything after she was wrongly accused of theft, made an appearance on the BBC’s Sunday politics show.
She asked him: ‘What are you going to do to ensure we get fair and final compensation, not in dribs and drabs and not at a snail’s pace? Please stop making us still feel like victims.’
Mr Sunak replied: ‘Of course we want to get the money to people as quickly as possible.’
Another victim, Lee Castleton, told the programme that the £138million paid out by the Government so far paled in comparison to the £150million spent on legal fees by the wrongly accused postmasters.
He said victims were ‘traumatised’ and it had felt like ‘a war’ trying to get payouts. He blamed creaking Whitehall bureaucracy for the delays, saying: ‘It’s the Government that has got to move the claims through quicker at their end and they’re just not doing it.’
Former Cabinet minister Sir David Davis, who has long campaigned to get justice for the postmasters, last night called for the issue to be resolved urgently. He said: ‘I don’t care if this bankrupts the Post Office. If the Post Office is bankrupt, you won’t shut it down, it’s just that the State will refinance it.
‘The Post Office is behaving like a private company protecting its shareholders, which is bonkers because the shareholder is the taxpayer. What do you think the taxpayer wants to happen now? Millions of them at the moment are probably furious.’
had approached the Post Office for comment.