LPAID IN UP TO £100K IWAS TOO SCARED TO SAY I WAS SHORT

Salman says Post Office ordeal >>Feared he would be sent to was as stressful as his cancer fight jail for something he hadn't done

- SALLY HIND

A YOUNG postmaster who survived cancer has told how his ordeal over plugging a £100,000 Horizon black hole was as stressful as his fight with the deadly disease.

Salman Aslam said a relentless five-year battle with the Post Office over major discrepancies at his Motherwell branch destroyed his life.

The 25-year-old finally walked away from the business he took over from his father last summer, having been blamed for another £80,000 shortfall he could not pay.

Salman, from Bathgate, West Lothian, spoke out after other Scots postmasters told the Record that the Fujitsu IT system - which was previously blamed for the wrongful convictions of hundreds of postmasters and is at the centre of a national scandal - is still making lives a misery.

He says Horizon left him broke, depressed and had tarnished his reputation. He told the Record: "For the five years I was in that post office I genuinely lived in fear of an audit team coming in and finding us short.

"I probably accumulated up to £100,000 in cash I had put in myself.

"I should never have paid it all. But I can't explain how bad the scare tactics are.

"Nine times out of 10 I was just burying it. I was far too scared to go to them again and say I was short.

"After what happened with the post office, I could put that in the same bracket as having cancer in terms of the stress it has caused"

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 post office branch managers were convicted of false accounting, theft and fraud based on the faulty Horizon software.

While the scandal has been public knowledge for some time and a public inquiry is ongoing, ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office has thrust the issue into the spotlight, forcing both the UK and Scottish Governments to promise legislation exonerating victims this month.