'Dad's wish before he died was for the post office to be ours again'

ROOPIE BECOMES FIRST VICTIM OF HORIZON SCANDAL TO GO BACK BEHIND THE COUNTER

- ADAM DUTTON News Reporter

A BIRMINGHAM postmistress who lost her Post Office after being wrongly accused of theft during the Horizon scandal has returned to run her family business - 15 years on.

Rooprit Gill, 56, is believed to be the first victim of the scandal to return to the same branch they ran and says she's doing so in honour of her late father, Nirmal Singh Kailey.

Nirmal bought the Wattville Road Post Office in Handsworth in 1976 and Rooprit took the helm in 2005.

But five years into her role she was dismissed after the faulty Post Office accounting software wrongly suggested she'd stolen £46,000.

Hundreds of postmasters and postmistresses around the country were falsely accused of theft or fraud in the Horizon controversy between 1999 and 2015.

Rooprit's father died before she was exoneration and before the scale of the scandal was exposed.

Rooprit, known as Roopie, says she was determined to return to honour his memory. And this week she stepped foot behind the counter for the first time in 15 years.