Published: 22:07 BST, 15 August 2026 | Updated: 07:47 BST, 16 August 2026
Roopie Gill's family call it her 'Peggy Mitchell moment', a reference to the iconic EastEnders scene when the formidable landlady of the Queen Vic faced down interlopers and told them: 'Get outta my pub.'
Roopie, 57, is no brash Peggy Mitchell (by demeanour she is the polar opposite) and this is a respectable post office not a pub, but still.
She tells me of the afternoon, a little over a year ago, when she walked to the back of the Birmingham convenience store her father opened 50 years ago, to the post office counter which has been at the heart of the place, physically and emotionally, for five decades.
She still couldn't set foot behind the counter – barred after being wrongly convicted of theft – but she politely asked for a meeting with those who had taken her position.
None of this was their fault, but she had to address it, she explains. 'I sat them down, I opened my laptop and I showed them footage from the Post Office enquiry – footage that proved I was innocent,' she recalls.
'I said that, firstly, if anyone ever called me a thief again, or warned customers to check their change, I would sue for slander. Oh and that, secondly, I would be taking the post office back over.'
Jaws dropped, by all accounts. There is nothing triumphalist about the retelling of this pivotal moment, but Roopie admits it was 'the best moment I'd had for a long time'.
There have been so many tragic stories to emerge from the Post Office scandal, but Roopie's is among the most shocking.
Not only did this proud sub-postmistress attempt to take her own life when she was accused (erroneously) of stealing £38,000, she lost her home, her husband (Raju, also implicated, died in terrible circumstances during the process) and her good name.
Rooprit Gill (known as Roopie), who runs the Post Office in Handsworth, Birmingham, returned to work last year
Pictured: Roppie's parents Balbir Kaur Kailey (left) and Nirmal Singh Kailey (right)
ITV turned the plight of the Post Office victims into an award-winning drama, starring Toby Jones as Sir Alan Bates – a former subpostmaster and a leading campaigner for victims of the British Post Office scandal
Her ordeal lasted for 15 years, and it's only when you are standing in the family shop, in the suburb of Handsworth, that you can appreciate how that must have felt. The geography of this place means that there was never any escape from the shame and humiliation.
'I continued to work there, trying to keep the place going, able to hear the customers whispering about 'thieves'.