The Post Office scandal left me wanting to kill myself

There was no way out. I had been locked up in a prison with blood on the walls and people self-harming all around me.

- SEEMA MISRA

I had been parted from my husband and my 10-year-old son – as well as the rest of my family – because the Post Office had successfully prosecuted me for stealing just under £75,000 in my role as a Surrey subpostmistress.

My sentence, at Bronzefield Prison in Surrey, was for 15 months. The accusations from the Post Office - and my conviction, in 2010 - had brought shame on my family and led to my husband being subjected to racially aggravated physical attacks several times. I thought to myself, “What do I have to live for?”

But there was one reason in particular - the eight-week-old child growing inside me. When I was sentenced, I was two months pregnant. That child was my reason to live.

While I was incarcerated, I did everything I could to protect my growing baby - constantly worried that some harm would come to it from the unpredictable behaviour of my fellow inmates and the makeshift weapons they would carry.

Fortunately, my imprisonment would last just four and a half months in total, which, nevertheless, still felt a huge length of time. For the rest of my sentence, I had to wear an electronic tag. And that is how I gave birth to the child I had been carrying - in a hospital, wearing an electronic tag. It is maybe not surprising that, because of the ordeal I had been through, my labour took three days.