The teacher who took six years off on full pay after lying about injury
A TEACHER who lied about an accident at work and took six years off sick on full pay has been lambasted by an employment judge.
Anna Yerrakalva, who had brought an unfair dismissal claim in 2010, yesterday won the case on a technicality – but was told she would receive no compensation because of her lies.
However, the case has cost taxpayers around £300,000.
Mrs Yerrakalva, a widow and mother of two, went off sick after her alleged accident in November 2003.
The 58-year-old primary school teacher claimed a teaching assistant had an epileptic fit in the classroom and fell on her,
‘Grossly exaggerating’
trapping her on the floor and leaving her with chest, neck and spinal injuries.
An investigation by Dearne Carrfield Primary School in Bolton-on-dearne, South Yorkshire concluded the accident never happened. She briefly returned to work there, only to be struck by a bus in June 2004, and has never worked since.
She was on full pay of about £30,000 a year until she was suspended in 2009 – and was finally sacked the following January for gross misconduct.
Her pay while off sick has been estimated at around £180,000 and the council’s legal bill is believed to exceed £120,000.
However, the tribunal yesterday found the school governors and her employers Barnsley Council were responsible for an act of victimisation on grounds of disability and unfairly dismissed her as she was not allowed to return to work and deal with grievances according to the rules.
If proper procedures had been followed she would ‘inevitably’ have been sacked fairly, the panel said. Employment judge Stephen Shore said her compensation for unfair dismissal was being reduced by 100 per cent because the she ‘told a series of lies’ and added the credibility of her testimony was ‘in tatters’.
The Sheffield tribunal heard Mrs Yerrakalva had been claiming disability living allowance and industrial injury benefit in 2006 and 2007 yet at the same time told her employers that she was fit to return to work.
Her astonishing list of 26 symptoms in her benefits claim forms ranged from finding it difficult to peel vegetables, open the curtains and turn on the taps.
In a reserved judgment Mr Shore said she was ‘grossly exaggerating’ her symptoms. He said she was a ‘thoroughly unreliable witness’ and the account of her accident at work ‘wholly inconsistent’. Her ‘lies and dissimilitudes’ included forgetting she owned a second home in Doncaster.
Her former headteacher Stephen Poxton told the hearing Mrs Yerrakalva was sacked after lying to her employers about her health. He said: ‘ Her claims caused . . . an irreparable breakdown of confidence. I could not trust this teacher with children.’
Mrs Yerrakalva, who moved to the UK from India in 1981 and lives in Sheffield, also won a claim for breach of contract and unlawful deduction of three weeks’ wages and is likely to receive modest compensation at a future date.