Post Office court case against sub-postmistress thrown out years before Horizon

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The Court of Appeal overturned the case of Tarla Mahida, after a judge said the Post Office had failed to provide evidence that £4,300 was missing from her branch in Buckinghamshire


The Post Office had a High Court case against a sub-postmistress thrown out because of missing evidence and potential “errors” in its accounting practices that were present years before the Horizon scandal emerged, i can reveal.

In 2003, the Court of Appeal overturned a claim by the Post Office for around £4,300 that was allegedly missing from the branch of Tarla Mahida in Lane End, Buckinghamshire.

Mrs Mahida, who died in 2016, was suspended and sacked in 1994 when the Post Office claimed she overstated the number of pension dockets she had sent off for reimbursement.


She always insisted she was innocent. The case closely mirrors claims made by a number of former sub-postmasters who believe they experienced unexplained shortfalls while using Capture, a piece of accounting software rolled out in 1992.

They include Steve Marston, 68, who was convicted of theft and false accounting offences in 1998 and the family of Liz Roberts who was jailed in 1999.

Mrs Mahida was interviewed by Post Office investigators at a police station but was eventually pursued in the civil courts.

The Post Office successfully sued her in the County Court, where she was forced to represent herself, but she was granted permission to appeal.

At the Court of Appeal in 2003, Lady Justice Hale, who later became the most senior judge in the country, overturned the decision and said that the Post Office had been unable to produce any of the original documentation to support its case.

She also noted that Mrs Mahida’s barrister Julian Kenny KC argued there “might be all sorts of errors and omissions” in the Post Office’s accounting that were not able to be challenged.

Despite the victory, Mrs Mahida’s daughter Chintan told i she “lost everything” at the hands of the Post Office and remained “bitter” about her experience with the justice system for the rest of her life.

“She wasn’t bothered about the money, she was more concerned about her good name,” Chintan added.

Mrs Mahida’s family recall that she used a Nixdorf computer installed by the Post Office and that she frequently suffered “error notices”.

The Post Office rolled out Capture despite IT bosses being aware that it was prone to faults and glitches that could lead to accounting errors.

Mr Kenny told i he remembers Mrs Mahida’s case well but that he had never considered the computer system may have made a mistake.

“I had no idea there was another system [before Horizon],” he said.

“Of course I’ve found it fascinating that all of this has come out and there’s been such close scrutiny of the process.

“At the time I didn’t think there anything unusual about this case – it seemed to be a fairly simple issue of dockets and foils.

“But this [claims about the Capture computer system] casts a new light on it.”

However, Chintan would now like her mother’s case to be explored in full along with Capture cases at the inquiry.

Kevan Jones, the MP who has supported Horizon victims for years, has called on the government to widen the terms of reference of the inquiry.

In a letter to Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake published in February, Mr Jones said that “failings being examined by the Inquiry – from faulty software, the use of computer evidence, the culture in the Post Office and the practices of the investigations department” were evident “long before” the Horizon scandal.

Hundreds of sub postmasters were prosecuted as a result of the Horizon scandal, after the faulty software was rolled out in 1999. The first media reports on the scandal came in 2009.

The ruling was referenced at the public inquiry into the Horizon scandal on Tuesday during the questioning of former chief operating officer David Miller.

The Department for Business and Trade has said it is in “active discussions” with the Post Office about the possibility of broadening the scope of the public inquiry, which resumed last week.

Chintan told i the case took an “immense toll” on her family’s life and her mother’s mental health but she was determined to prove her innocence.

“My mum fought the Post Office over this for years and years,” she said.

“She refused to accept it – she was not a thief. But she didn’t know how to prove it.

“What I realise now is that the Post Office was doing this to sub-postmasters long before Horizon, they practised on people like my mum.

“I believe it is extremely important that cases like hers pre-Horizon are also looked at by the public inquiry as it speaks to the merciless culture within Post Office in pursuit of its own sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses.”

A Post Office spokesperson said: “We’re grateful to the i for sharing details of this case and we urge Ms Mahida to get in touch and if possible share any additional information or documents from the time her mother was a Postmistress so we can look into this further.”

The Post Office has said previously it takes “very seriously any concerns raised about cases from before the Horizon system was first rolled out in 1999.”

“Our current understanding is that Capture does not appear to have been ‘networked’, but the software was used by some Postmasters, alongside manual processes, for simplifying accounts before they were manually submitted,” a spokesperson added.

“We are particularly concerned about allegations of prosecutions, and we are looking into this along with all available facts about Capture, including whether shortfalls could have been caused by faults in this software, and the potential impacts if so.

“Given the passage of time, around 30 years ago, and changes to data storage systems since the split from Royal Mail, we do not yet have a complete picture of Capture but are looking into the issue given the concerns raised.”