Highlights
- Parmod Kalia, 67, died without receiving full compensation after being wrongly convicted during the Post Office scandal.
- Kalia kept his conviction secret for 15 years even from those close to him after being advised to plead guilty.
- MPs have hit out at Fujitsu for being "yet to contribute a penny" to the nearly £1.5 billion redress bill.
His close friend and fellow former sub-postmaster Tim Brentnall told BBC that Kalia was "a man who brought calmness and warmth to whatever situation he was in." He added: "Everybody was always drawn to him.
He was a really kind and wonderful man." Brentnall said Kalia also worked as a foster carer and felt proud of being able to give vulnerable children love and a stable home.
Conviction and injustice
Kalia was sent to prison in 2001 after his union representative advised him to plead guilty to theft. He kept this a secret for 15 years even from people he was close to.
His conviction was thrown out at Southwark Crown Court in 2021 and the Post Office did not fight his appeal.
However the Post Office said there was still a reasonable chance he could have been found guilty at a new trial and so refused to pay him full compensation for wrongful prosecution. This meant Kalia died without getting the money he was owed.
On Friday a group of MPs criticised Fujitsu for not paying "a single penny" towards the nearly £1.5 bn owed to victims of the Horizon scandal.
They called for urgent steps to clear the names of everyone still affected. Kalia's death without full compensation has made many people angrier about the slow pace of justice for victims of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history.
