A former north Oxford postmistress will go to the Court of Appeal later this month in a bid to overturn a historic conviction for allegedly taking £50,000.
The case is understood to be one of a number of Post Office cases being dealt with at the Royal Courts of Justice over two days.
To date, more than 70 postmasters and postmistresses have had their convictions overturned on appeal – after Post Office bosses accepted that ‘missing’ funds were down to problems in the Horizon accounting software.
Margaret Sowinska was 46 when she was given a 12 month suspended sentence at Oxford Crown Court in 2007.
She admitted two counts of false accounting while working in the post office at Martin’s newsagent in Banbury Road, Summertown.
Adrian Chaplin, prosecuting, told the court a surprise post office audit in October 2006 showed Ms Sowinska had apparently changed banking records to hide a missing £50,260.91.
Mitigating, Colin McCarragher said Ms Sowinska was inexperienced at running the post office's books, had only two days accounting training and could not explain where the money had gone.
The crown court heard that the money had not been found.
Clerks at the Court of Appeal confirmed that Ms Sowinska was challenging her 2007 convictions for false accounting.
The case will be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice on March 22.
File image of Post Office Picture: PA WIRE
Launched last month, a public inquiry is currently looking into how much the Post Office knew about faults in the Horizon IT system.
Jason Beer QC, counsel to the inquiry, said the ordeal of those affected could be ‘the worst miscarriage of justice in recent British legal history’.
He added: “Lives were ruined, families were torn apart, families were made homeless and destitute.”
Former Horspath postmaster Vipinchandra Patel was one of those wrongly convicted of stealing from the Post Office. His convictions were later overturned on appeal.
Earlier this month, his son Varchas told the Oxford Mail: “I was 23 when my father was prosecuted. I saw the prison officer come upstairs to the flat and put an ankle tag on my dad. It was horrendous to see my dad in bed; it was me, my sister and my mum who were forcing him to get out of bed. He couldn’t face the world.”
His father was ‘confused, lost and stressed’, he said.
Varchas, now 34, called for compensation promised to the wrongly-convicted postmasters, to be paid swiftly. He said: “We’ve all suffered damage which is not repairable.”
File image of Royal Courts of Justice Picture: PA WIRE
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