'Very emotional': Mr Bates vs The Post Office drama praised by victim wrongly jailed over £11,000 'theft'
A former post office worker who was wrongly jailed for stealing more than £11,000 has praised a television drama about the scandal.
Tracy Felstead hopes the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which concludes tonight, will give the public a greater understanding of what more than 700 post officers went through when they were falsely accused of theft or false accounting.
The four-part drama stars Toby Jones as Alan Bates, a sub-postmaster who clashed with the Post Office management over glitches in the organisation's computer database, called Horizon.
It was these repeated glitches with the Post Office's computer system that led to more than 700 post office workers being wrongly accused of theft or false accounting.
Among them were Miss Felstead, who lives in Telford, Rubbina Shaheen, who kept a post office in Shrewsbury, and Carl Page, who kept a branch in Rugeley.
Miss Felstead was an 18-year-counter clerk when she was accused of stealing £11,500 from the post office branch where she worked in London. The following year she was jailed for six months, after being wrongly convicted of theft.
Her conviction was overturned in April 2021 – alongside those of Mrs Shaheen and Mr Page – and Miss Felstead is still in negotiations with the Post Office regarding a compensation settlement.
