A FORMER subpostmaster said today that he fell apart when he was wrongfully convicted and jailed for stealing more than £200,000 due to flaws with the Post Office computer system.

Harjinder Butoy, 45, ran a post office with his wife in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, until he was arrested, charged and then jailed in 2008 for three years and three months for stealing £208,000.

Mr Butoy was among more than 700 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses prosecuted between 2000 and 2014 based on information from the Horizon IT system, installed and maintained by Fujitsu.

But in December 2019, a High Court judge ruled that Horizon contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a material risk that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.

The High Court overturned Mr Butoy’s conviction, along with those of 38 other former postmasters, in April last year.

Speaking to an inquiry into the scandal today, Mr Butoy said his family had been destroyed by the false conviction.

He said that between 2004 and 2007, his branch had no problems passing the Post Office’s audits and was even signed off on an audit without any issues a week before his arrest.

But in April 2007, he was detained by CID officers after a group of people turned up to his branch to do a security audit and found £208,000 missing.

Mr Butoy said he felt shocked, confused and ashamed as customers watched him being taken away by the police.

In September 2008, he was jailed for three years and three months, thought to be one of the largest sentences among the Horizon cases, and was given a £60,000 confiscation order.

Mr Butoy described his ordeal in prison as terrible. He lost more than six stone and was “stressed every day.”

“I kept thinking ‘how did I end up here,’ just thinking about my family,” he said.

Mr Butoy’s wife and three children had to move in with his parents in Chesterfield and he ended up filing for bankruptcy to pay for the order.

“Everything has just fallen apart for me. I have no confidence in myself any more,” he said.

The inquiry, which is expected to run for the rest of this year, is looking into whether the Post Office knew about faults in the IT system and how staff were made to take the blame.