Man cleared after confessing to Post Office theft to protect mum

In 2009 auditors turned up at the post office where his mother was the sub-postmistress, and uncovered an alleged shortfall.

Mr Naga, from Port Glasgow, said he told his mum to tell investigators he had stolen the money to “buy some time”.

They had no idea at the time that the Horizon IT system had bugs and errors that caused phantom shortfalls.

The “missing” money never appeared and the father-of-two ended up pleading guilty to theft.

He was sentenced to 300 hours of community service and the family lost their business.

Mr Naga said he caught Tuberculosis while carrying out his community service and struggled to get work in the years that followed. But he doesn’t regret taking the blame.

He said the family feared his mum wouldn’t have survived a potential prison sentence:

Mr Naga said: “I feel if I hadn’t done what I’d done 15 years ago, I wouldn’t be sitting here now getting my conviction overturned.

“I’d have been sitting here now getting a letter saying that my dead mum was being exonerated, because that’s the effect it would have had on the family.”