Sub-postmaster suffered racist abuse from local community after wrongful conviction

A wrongly convicted postmaster told ITV News that the mistrust and suspicion piled upon him saw his once peaceful village life blighted by abuse and harrasment, as Nick Wallis reports

Thirteen years ago, Vipin Patel was suicidal. He’d been convicted of stealing £34,000 from the Post Office branch he ran in Horspath, Oxfordshire.

The Patels were the only Asian family in the village. Shortly after Vipin’s conviction, a sign was placed on the Patels’ shop door.

It read: "Wanted: Dead or Alive. Post Office Robber. If you know where this person could be found, you could get a reward of a £10,000 Giro! Be Warned, he can be Dangerous."

Vipin describes it as a stressful time. "Every morning you wake up, you had this feeling like stomach-churning and body not wanting to get up because you didn’t know how to face the day."

Jayshree, Vipin’s wife, believes there was malign intent behind the poster. "Someone in the village… a very nasty person… they wanted Vipin [to] die."

Around this time Jayshree says she was racially abused by a customer as she worked behind the counter in the shop.

Many Horspath residents saw their village Post Office as an important resource and didn’t want to lose it.

The Patels came under pressure to let a different sub-postmaster run the branch from within their shop. Vipin refused. It didn’t make financial sense.

An email exchange between two villagers, seen by ITV News, disagreed with Vipin’s assessment. "Your reading of economics is actually spot on," wrote one correspondent "but you have overlooked one thing… east is east and west is west!"

The same email also (mystifyingly) notes that Vipin and Jayshree’s children "are now earning money in the big wide world, and we all understand the culture."

Another email sent to Horspath Parish Council suggests the Patels’ permission to use village-owned land for customer parking and access to their private driveway should be revoked. "I am sorry" writes the email’s author, "but there has to be a realistic stick."

Once it became apparent the Patels were not going to allow a Post Office to be run from their premises, some villagers wanted them to sell up and leave. An estate agent’s “for sale” sign was hammered into the ground outside their shop.

“The idea was to drive us out.” says Vipin, “Frightening us to any extent [to] get results."

The Patels refused to countenance returning to London where they had lived and worked before buying Horspath Village Stores. But it was tough.

In 2016, five years after Vipin’s conviction, a memorial cross was cemented into a section of land directly outside Horspath Village Stores. On the cross was written “RIP VIPIN.”

Vipin described his alarm on seeing the cross for the first time: “I was still being treated for depression and suicidal counselling… this was another big blow"

Keith Woods is a Horspath resident and friend of Vipin’s. He has no doubt racism played a part in the treatment of the Patels. “Definitely,” Keith told me, “because he’s a foreigner… or Asian. If he’d have been an Englishman or white man they’d probably look at it a little bit differently.”

In the months after Vipin’s conviction, whilst he was battling his mental health, Jayshree kept the show on the road, working long hours in the shop.

She would find herself checking on Vipin every half hour, worried he might harm himself if he was left alone for too long.

Jayshree told me that sometimes she would install Vipin behind the counter in the shop so she could go upstairs to cry.

The couple’s son, Varchas, was 23 at the time of Vipin’s conviction and living in London. He said his parents tried to shield him from what they were going through, particularly Jayshree. “She didn’t need to do that,” he told me “She could have come to me for help.”

Of those in the village who made Vipin and Jayshree feel unwelcome, Varchas says “they all should be ashamed of themselves.”

The Patels are keen to stress that the majority of the people in Horspath have not caused them any problems and they have been able to build a successful business, despite Vipin’s conviction and the closure of his Post Office branch.

In 2020, I travelled to Horspath on the day Vipin’s conviction was quashed and witnessed a celebration as a stream of villagers came to the shop to shake Vipin’s hand and take photographs of the Patels, who were beaming with delight.

The Patels say everything has changed again since the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, with people sending letters of support and former villagers going out of their way to drop by their shop to wish them well.

When we contacted the Post Office for comment, it said "we are deeply sorry for the pain which has been suffered by so many people, their families and friends throughout the Horizon IT Scandal.”

The Post Office also told us that since being appointed, its chief executive has met a number of former Subpostmasters as he believes its “important to understand the trauma that people have gone through”.

When I asked the Patels if they thought the Post Office had any idea what it had done by pursuing hundreds of innocent people through the criminal courts, Vipin said: “No. They haven’t got a clue, because they work in ivory towers and we are small people.

"They couldn’t care less of the catastrophic disasters they have caused on me, and all of the sub-postmasters."

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