The shocking true story of a woman relentlessly pursued by a catfish first captivated true crime lovers in podcast format. Now it has finally been made into a Netflix documentary.
But as viewers watch the story of how Kirat Assi, from west London, was dragged into a fake relationship with a man she met online, some are wondering how on earth she could have fallen for the scam in the first place.
The 43-year-old man from the west London She spent almost an entire decade believing she was communicating online with an eligible cardiologist named Bobby Jandu and their friendship slowly turned into romance.
Now, six years after discovering she had been communicating with a fake version of Bobby all along, Kirat has responded to people who have called her “stupid” for falling for the scam.
Talking to him bbc she said: ‘I’m not stupid, I’m not stupid. I am the one chosen to speak.
Kirat Assi, 43, from west London, spent almost an entire decade believing he was communicating with a doctor called Bobby online.
“I’m the one who has put myself in the line of fire and I hope others come forward.”
He added that he is finally trying to rebuild his life and is working “harder than he should” to get his career back on track.
At times, the couple spoke on the phone almost daily (the conversations sometimes turned sexual), but they never met in person due to Bobby’s extravagant excuses.
Whether he had been shot, placed in the Witness Protection Program, or even suffered a brain tumor, Bobby’s claims were always backed up by family and friends, or so Kirat thought.
Fake Bobby eventually became so obsessive and controlling that Kirat suffered chest pains and was eventually fired from work due to stress.
After nine years of online communication, Kirat finally located Bobby in person, only to discover that he had no idea who she was. As a confused Kirat tried to figure out what was going on, everything became clear when the person who had planned the catfish scam came clean.
‘Bobby’ along with 50 other fake profiles in his ‘friends’ network were being managed by his cousin Simran Bhogal; to whom Kirat had been confiding his relationship problems.
Kirat told BBC Asian Network News that she doesn’t know why her cousin decided to hunt her down for almost a decade and that she “stopped looking for answers a long time ago.”
“You can never justify the extent to which that person went,” he said. “I can’t understand why you didn’t stop…what gave you pleasure in hearing someone suffer.”
Kirat, of Punjabi origin, told the BBC that the South Asian community is generally “afraid to open up about these issues.”
He stated that his own father “doesn’t want to know what happened to him.”
Pictured: The real Bobby, whose identity and photographs were used to deceive Kirat for nine years on social media.
In reality, the profile – and others in his “friends'” fake network – was being run by Kirat’s cousin Simran Bhogal (far right).
Kirat said, ‘I love my dad and I know my dad loves me. “He was raised with a different set of values.”
The 43-year-old wonders if the catfishing experience would have been different if she came from other backgrounds.
In 2009, Kirat, a prominent member of London’s Sikh community, was working as an arts and events assistant for Hounslow Community Services and presenting a program on Radio Desi, a station for the Punjabi community.
She was in a relationship when, out of the blue, she received a Facebook message apparently from Simran’s ex-boyfriend, JJ, asking for guidance on how to get her back.
The pair struck up a friendship and communicated for the next five months before she heard the news that JJ had died, and Simran passed her her brother ‘Bobby’s’ email address to send her condolences.
The fake profile used Bobby’s real photos and some biographical details without his consent, and in November 2010, Kirat had his first encounter with the fake Facebook profile.
In 2009, Kirat, a prominent member of London’s Sikh community, was working as an arts and events assistant for Hounslow Community Services and presenting a program on Radio Desi, a station for the Punjabi community.
The pair began to develop a friendship and he told her he was married with a child on the way. But Bobby soon began divulging details of their collapsed relationship.
“We weren’t close, but I saw him as a friend, a little brother,” she told the Daily Mail in 2021.
In November 2013, she was at work when she received a message on Facebook saying that Bobby had been shot and was in a coma and suffering from memory loss. Later, in January 2014, he learned that he had died.
‘They invited me to join a group of their friends on Facebook. There were 39 people in it. Since then I knew that none of them were real.
Shortly after, Kirat received an email out of the blue informing him that Bobby was actually alive but faked his own death and was hiding in a witness protection program.
“Ridiculous,” he admitted. “But at every turn, these crazy events were supported by other people.”
They told him that ‘Bobby’ drank a lot and was suicidal. In 2015, he was informed that he had suffered a brain tumor, followed by a stroke.
‘Bobby’ declared his love for Kirat a few weeks before they ‘got together’ on Valentine’s Day 2015.
Simran used images of the real Bobby (pictured) to trick Kirat into believing she was in a relationship with the cardiologist for years.
‘Bobby’ declared his love for Kirat a few weeks before they actually ‘got together’ on Valentine’s Day 2015. Pictured: Kirat during a video call with Bobby
“I didn’t expect him to live. His advisor (there were also constant messages from his fake medical team) didn’t expect him to live beyond July,” he had said three years ago.
His feelings toward this “dying man” were confusing.
I’m not a soft person. When he said ‘I love you’, I didn’t know what to think, but I loved him… like a friend, then.
‘I also thought, ‘Where’s the harm?’ It’s not like I was ever going to have a physical relationship with this person. But he kept putting the idea in my head. And everyone else kept saying, ‘Oh, he’s so in love with you.’
In the years that followed, the pair formed a relationship, exchanging several messages daily and their relationship even became sexual, although Kirat never sent nude images of herself.
In 2017, ‘Bobby’ was becoming controlling, including an incident where he forced Kirat to pay for a private mammogram at a London hospital after she experienced chest pains; He then became enraged when she told him the consultant had been a man.
She was fired from her job sick and stressed and eventually fired.
“I tried to find another one, but Bobby didn’t want me to work,” he had previously explained.
After their meeting, both Bobby (pictured, the real Bobby) and Kirat went to the police.
Kirat believed she was in a relationship with a cardiologist who lived in Australia. His identity was based on the profile and photographs of a real man.
Kirat was desperate to meet Bobby in person, but every time an arrangement was made, something happened, including once when he supposedly suffered a heart attack.
After increasingly outlandish claims from ‘Bobby’, Kirat hired a private detective and confronted the ‘real life’ Bobby, a happily married man with children who had no idea his name was being used to launch a nine-year campaign of deception. .
Kirat, who appeared on the popular six-part Sweet Bobby podcast hosted by Alexi Mostrous, has previously spoken candidly about the horror of finding out who was behind the ‘Bobby’ she fell in love with.
She revealed how she ‘vomited’ and ‘fainted’ when Simran finally confessed the truth on June 11, 2018.
Kirat said, ‘I opened myself to him, to her! – telling him things about my hopes, dreams, my childhood, that I would never tell anyone. I feel violated.’
‘It has taken ten years of my life, years that I will not get back. In that time I could have met someone real, had a baby. I lost my friends, my job, my savings.’