London: A British-Indian former manager of a Post Office in the United Kingdom (UK), who was wrongly jailed while pregnant, has rejected the apology of an engineer whose evidence helped convict her.
Seema Misra, 47, told the BBC that a statement from former Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins was "too little, too late". She was among hundreds of employees falsely accused of theft and fraud by the Post Office in the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history.
In 2010, Misra was eight weeks pregnant with her second child when she was sentenced to prison after she was accused of stealing GBP70,000 from her Post Office branch in West Byfleet, Surrey. She ended up serving four months in prison due to a glitch in the accounting system -- developed and operated by Japanese firm Fujitsu Ltd on behalf of the Post Office -- which wrongly reported financial discrepancies at several post office branches.
She gave birth to her child while wearing an electronic tag. "Nobody can understand it," Misra said of her ordeal. "He [Jenkins] could have apologized ages ago". Her reaction followed a written witness statement submitted to the Post Office Inquiry by Jenkins in which he apologized to Misra and said he didn't know she was pregnant at that time.
Jenkins, who appeared as an expert witness in multiple sub-postmaster cases, is currently under police investigation for potential perjury.
