- Kirat Assi shares her story of being catfished for eight years in Netflix’s “Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare.”
- Assi thought she was dating a rich man named Bobby Jandu.
- The catfisher, Simran Bhogal, seems to have no online presence now.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Netflix’s “Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare” and Tortoise’s podcast “Sweet Bobby.”
Netflix’s “Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare” is the streaming service’s latest scammer true crime documentary, a genre that has been increasingly popular in recent years, with titles like “The Tinder Swindler,” “Bitconned,” and “Bad Vegan” capturing the attention of the platform’s hundreds of millions of subscribers worldwide.
The documentary, as well as the hit Tortoise Media podcast of the same name, follows Kirat Assi, a radio presenter in London who describes how she began an online friendship with Bobby Jandu, a wealthy man she met in 2010 through Facebook.
Over the next eight years, their friendship turned into a romantic relationship: she met his family through social media, and the couple got engaged without ever meeting in real life. But in 2018, Assi discovered she had been deceived when she tracked down the real Bobby Jandu, who was living in Brighton with his wife and child and had no idea who Assi was.
Ultimately, after the confrontation, Simran Bhogal, a relative of Assi’s, came to her house to confess that she had created fake Facebook accounts for Jandu and his family and had been messaging her on all of them.
The documentary features interviews with Assi, the real Jandu, and his wife, Sanj Jandu, but Bhogal never appears. Instead, an actor portrays Bhogal in pictures.
A title card at the end of the documentary says Bhogal declined to be interviewed. “This matter involves events that began when she was a schoolgirl,” it reads. “She considers it a private matter and strongly objects to what she describes as ‘numerous unfounded’ and damaging accusations.”
The documentary does not provide any other information indicating where Bhogal is now. Here’s what else we could find out about her.
Simran Bhogal seems to have scrubbed her online presence
Business Insider could not find Bhogal’s current Facebook or LinkedIn accounts, if they indeed still exist. Assi has also hidden her friends list on Facebook and has hidden or deleted all of her posts from 2009 to 2018.
In the documentary, Assi said that Bhogal deleted all the fake accounts.
Tortoise’s 2021 podcast series “Sweet Bobby,” also about Assi’s catfishing case, provides the most information about Bhogal’s life.
The podcast reported that Bhogal was about 18 when she began catfishing Assi as Bobby Jandu.
In episode four, host Alexi Mostrous said Bhogal lived 20 minutes from Assi’s home in West London when they recorded the podcast in 2021. In episode five, Mostrous said Bhogal worked at a well-known British bank and was promoted to vice president in 2018.
That bank is rumored to be Barclays, but this has not been verified. In 2018, a recruitment company called Talent Ticker posted on X that a person named Simran Bhogal was promoted to Vice President, COO & finance business partner at Barclays.
A representative for Barclays did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
In episode six, Mostrous said that Bhogal had left the job in 2021, though he did not know the reason why.
London’s Metropolitan police is still investigating the case, and Assi sued Bhogal in 2020. They settled in 2021, which included a payout to Assi and an apology letter, which Assi could only show to a limited number of people.
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