When Adi Misra went to school on his 10th birthday, his pregnant mother told him they would celebrate later.
But his mum was sent to prison that day having been wrongfully accused of stealing £75,000 from the Post Office – and spent nearly five months in jail. Adi thought she was in hospital and only discovered the truth eight years later. Now aged 23, he says he “hated” his mum for leaving him so abruptly. Speaking to the BBC, Adi says all the Horizon victims deserve compensation.
11 November, 2010
Adi’s mother, Seema, was the sub-postmistress in West Byfleet, running the village post office and shop at the “heart of the community”. But on Adi’s 10th birthday, everything changed. Adi’s parents dropped him off at school, telling him they would be back to collect him later when they’d celebrate together. “It never happened,” he says. Unknown to Adi, his parents were going to court where his mother was handed a 15-month sentence and sent to Bronzefield women’s prison. “I didn’t know what was happening. My mum left me and I really hated her for that.” Adi says he was told his mother – who was pregnant with her second child – was in a “special kind of hospital”. Only allowed to see her once every two to three weeks for half an hour, he remembers feeling unsettled visiting her in a place where there were no men and everyone wore the same clothes. “It was very weird,” he says, “I hated it, I genuinely hated it.”
