KIRAT Assi believed she had found the perfect man online in Dr Bobby Jandu, with whom she shared a ten-year relationship until the stomach-turning truth came to light.
She was being catfished by a member of her own family — the cruel case is featured in the new Netflix true crime documentary Sweet Bobby.
Kirat Assi was ruthlessly catfished for almost a decade[/caption]
Who is Kirat Assi?
Kirat Assi, also known as Harkirat Kaur Assi, is a 43-year-old radio presenter and marketer from West London.
She bravely revealed her harrowing experience of being catfished for nearly a decade by her cousin Simran Bhogal.
Catfishing is a term used to describe luring someone into a relationship by creating fake social media profiles.
Kirat shared her sickening story of betrayal and quest for justice with the hit podcast Sweet Bobby presented by Alexi Mostrous, which by March 2023 had already been downloaded 11million times.
The deception began in 2009 when Kirat developed an online relationship with a fictitious doctor named Bobby Jandu — a persona created by her cousin.
This elaborate scheme involved Bhogal fabricating more than 50 fake identities and manipulating her cousin emotionally, leading to prolonged and severe psychological distress.
Web of lies
Acting without pity, Kirat’s trusted cousin drew her into a web of lies, leaving her unemployed, friendless and on the verge of insanity.
At the centre of the scam was Bobby, a handsome cardiologist who eventually became Kirat’s romantic partner, even though they never met in person.
Bobby was a real person, but his online identity had been stolen by the scammer, Kirat’s younger cousin Bhogal.
In 2022, Sweet Bobby host Alixi wrote in The Sun: “I first came across Kirat’s story last June. A good source handed me a witness statement over lunch, telling me it contained details of ‘the craziest case’ he’d ever seen.
“As I read the 140-page document that night, I realised that he was right. In more than 15 years of journalism, I’ve never seen anything like it.
“The statement detailed every step of the catfishing operation — from 2009 when Kirat, from London, was first contacted on Facebook by someone called ‘JJ’, to the moment in June 2018 when Bhogal came round to her house and confessed to everything.
“Some of the details were, frankly, surreal. At one point, Bobby died and then came back to life, claiming he was in a witness protection programme having been shot in Kenya.
“He developed life-threatening illnesses, which meant he was stuck for long periods in hospital in New York.”
Why, why did you do this? Ten years of my life. You’ve stolen ten years of my life. Why didn’t you stop? How could you be so sick?
Kirat Assi
For the first few years of the ‘relationship’, Kirat and Bobby were just friends, until 2015 when they became an online couple.
Bobby was based in New York and Kirat in London, with the ‘cardiologist’ endlessly promising to visit her but never following through.
Master of excuses
Something always happened at the last minute — usually a medical emergency — and Bobby would cancel every scheduled rendezvous.
He was a master of excuses, telling Kirat he couldn’t video call her because his phone was playing up, or because he was in witness protection and the rules prohibited it.
Kirat believed she was in a real relationship with Dr Bobby Jandu[/caption]
Sophisticated and manipulative
The scam was incredibly sophisticated, with Bhogal’s characters interacting not just with Kirat, but also with each other.
On one occasion, Bobby asked Kirat to help him pick out some clothes for his baby son and they bought some clothes for him together online.
A couple of weeks later, Kirat saw pictures of Bobby’s real son wearing the clothes they chose.
As Alexi explained: “Simran, it seems, somehow managed to get access to photos of Bobby’s real son, presumably by Googling.
But Kirat was being lied to — that catfish was her cousin Simran Bhogal[/caption]
“She then worked out where the clothes he was wearing came from. And then tricked Kirat into thinking she had chosen the clothes herself.
“Another big reason why Kirat believed the scam was real was because Simran told her she had met Bobby face to face in New York, when she was on a business trip.”
When Kirat found out about the dastardly deception, she confronted her cousin.
She told the Sweet Bobby podcast: “I couldn’t understand it. “I just kept screaming at her, ‘Why, why did you do this? Ten years of my life. You’ve stolen ten years of my life. Why didn’t you stop? How could you be so sick?”
Kirat took her cousin to court after the truth came out[/caption]
Court proceedings
A civil action was initiated by Kirat in 2020.
Bhogal confessed to her deception in 2018, prompting Kirat to first report the matter to the police.
However, when the police declined to pursue criminal charges, Kirat decided to take civil legal action.
The litigation process lasted nearly 18 months and the case was ultimately settled out of court, with Bhogal agreeing to pay Kirat substantial damages and cover her legal costs.
Poster for Netflix Crime Documentary Sweet Bobby[/caption]
Additionally, Bhogal provided her cousin with a formal letter of apology as part of the settlement.
It is understood to be the longest case of known catfishing and the first successful civil claim related to it in the UK.
Netflix true crime doc
Based on the hit podcast, Sweet Bobby is coming to Netflix — from the producers of The Tinder Swindler and American Nightmare.
In the show’s trailer Kirat says she was 32 when she received a Facebook friend request that changed everything.
“What happened to me is just one crazy story. You can’t make it up.
“We’re talking about ten years of my life,” she says of her relationship with Bobby.
“Eventually, he tells me he loves me. We try to make it as normal as you can online … but there’s always an excuse why he can’t see me face-to-face,” she says.
Instead, Kirat and Bobby spoke on the phone for hours at a time and they even got engaged.
Eventually she realised that something wasn’t adding up, and she began to consider if she was being catfished.
“Finally, I was questioning everything,” she admits.
The trailer cuts to the real-life Bobby, who says: “I have never spoken to her in my life.”
