Post Office IT scandal: victims say bosses should answer for their role

theguardian.com:

A former Post Office worker has told the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal he tried to kill himself on three occasions after being wrongly imprisoned for stealing from his employer.

Another, also giving evidence on Tuesday, called for his former bosses including Adam Crozier, now chair of BT, to attend the hearings and answer for their role in the scandal.

Parmod Kalia, who was jailed for six months in 2001 after the organisation’s flawed IT system incorrectly suggested a £27,000 shortfall at his Orpington post office, told the inquiry how his once tight-knit family had been torn apart in the two decades since.

“It came as a bit of a shock when the prison wardens wanted my belt and my tie, that was a bit humiliating,” said the 63-year-old father of four, who was taken to Surrey’s High Down, a prison designated with the UK’s second-highest security level, after being sentenced.

“I was numb at the time. Walking through the front door, being asked to strip and given a uniform … I was locked up basically for 23 hours a day.”

Kalia, who had his conviction quashed last year but has yet to receive an interim compensation payment from the Post Office, said he had “buried” the events as best he could until a BBC Panorama documentary about the hundreds of wrongfully prosecuted Post Office workers aired in 2015.

“Since then I’m now in depression and I have anxiety issues,” he said. “In April last year I went to my GP and for the first time I told him I was suffering from depression and anxiety and had attempted suicide on three occasions in 2015.”

Kalia and his wife had struggled until as late as 1am some nights trying to get the Horizon IT system to balance the takings, as his young daughter slept behind the shop counter, and