Son of cleared Oxford postmaster fears time is running out for compensation
Varchas Patel demands compensation for his wrongfully convicted father
In 2011 Vipin Patel was charged with stealing £75,000 from the Post Office and handed an 18-week suspended prison sentence.
For the best part of 10 years Vipin and his family faced constant abuse, until his conviction was quashed by Southwark Crown Court in 2020.
But Mr Patel was blameless, with the ‘missing’ funds actually the result of an error in the Horizon IT software.
With his father's health in decline Varchas Patel believes it's time his father is finally compensated fairly for the years of suffering his family has faced.
"I think every person involved in this scandal should be awarded £600,000, because on many occasions people have lost their businesses, income and they've been bankrupted from their family homes.
"If my dad had argued with the post office in 2010 no one would have believed him and worse still if he'd tried to fight them they would have bankrupted us and taken the shop."
With little known about the scandal back in 2010 Vipin was subject to horrific abuse for nearly a decade.
"My dad received verbal racial abuse, at one stage they put a four foot cross out on the village green that said rest in peace Vipin."
"On another occasion there was a dead or alive poster circulating with my fathers face on it, it was horrible."
Out of the 93 convictions that have currently been overturned, Mr Patel is one of five who are being treated as public interest cases, meaning he has not yet received his interim payment of £160,000.
Varchas believes that those who caused this should be held accountable in recognition of the suffering it has caused.
"I think Paula Vennels is going to have her CBE overturned, the public are outraged and if I was Paula I'd hand it back before it was taken from me."
"There needs to be an act of parliament to overturn all remaining convictions in mass, otherwise this process will drag on for another century."