Son of subpostmistress tells of relief after conviction quashed

The son of a subpostmistress who falsely admitted stealing £35,000 to save his mother from prison has said he shed tears of relief when his conviction was quashed.

Ravinder Naga was ordered to complete 300 hours of community service and pay compensation of £35,000 in 2010 after he confessed to stealing the money from the Post Office where his mother worked in Greenock, Inverclyde.

In 2022 he requested a review of his conviction and sentence, and the Scottish Cases Review Commission referred it to the High Court, saying Mr Naga had “pled guilty in circumstances that were, or could be said to be, clearly prejudicial to him”.

His conviction was quashed by appeal judges on August 22, court officials said.

Mr Naga told the BBC he was relieved at the outcome, saying this week: “If I’m being really honest, for a second it brought tears to me, I did break down for a second, and then it was relief.

“There have been times where it has been hard to carry on with everything else that does go on, but we’re here.”

More than 700 Post Office branch managers around the UK were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 after faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as though money was missing from their shops, with many convictions subsequently being overturned.

Mr Naga said he believes that if he had not taken the blame his mother would not have survived a potential prison sentence.

He told the BBC: “I feel if I hadn’t done what I’d done 15 years ago, I wouldn’t be sitting here now getting my conviction overturned.

“I’d have been sitting here now getting a letter saying that my dead mum was being exonerated, because that’s the effect it would have had on the family.”

Legislation exonerating subpostmasters in Scotland wrongly convicted as part of the Post Office Horizon scandal came into force in June after a law doing so for subpostmasters in England and Wales was introduced earlier this year.

A Post Office spokesperson said: “We are truly sorry for the suffering caused by Post Office’s past actions.

“We are doing all we can to help victims get answers and to put things right, as far as that can ever be possible.”