Tributes are being paid to Parmod Kalia, a former post office branch manager who was wrongly convicted during the Post Office Horizon IT scandal and has died without getting the full compensation he deserved.
Kalia, 67, ran a post office in Orpington, south-east London, for 11 years before being accused of theft and sent to prison for six months.
His conviction was later overturned but he said the experience had broken him. Between 1999 and 2015 more than 700 post office branch managers were wrongly convicted of fraud and theft because of faulty Horizon software.
His close friend and fellow former sub-postmaster Tim Brentnall told BBC that Kalia was "a man who brought calmness and warmth to whatever situation he was in." He added: "Everybody was always drawn to him.
He was a really kind and wonderful man." Brentnall said Kalia also worked as a foster carer and felt proud of being able to give vulnerable children love and a stable home.
Conviction and injustice
Kalia was sent to prison in 2001 after his union representative advised him to plead guilty to theft. He kept this a secret for 15 years even from people he was close to.
His conviction was thrown out at Southwark Crown Court in 2021 and the Post Office did not fight his appeal.
However the Post Office said there was still a reasonable chance he could have been found guilty at a new trial and so refused to pay him full compensation for wrongful prosecution. This meant Kalia died without getting the money he was owed.
On Friday a group of MPs criticised Fujitsu for not paying "a single penny" towards the nearly £1.5 bn owed to victims of the Horizon scandal.
They called for urgent steps to clear the names of everyone still affected. Kalia's death without full compensation has made many people angrier about the slow pace of justice for victims of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history.