Kirat Assi (also known as Harkirat Kaur Assi), a 44-year-old radio presenter and marketer from West London, is at the center of the new Netflix documentary Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare. The documentary examines Assi’s 10-year online relationship with someone she thought was Dr. Bobby Jandu, but ended up being a member of her family.
Assi first met who she thought was Jandu in 2009, and after a Facebook friend request, the two became friends. In 2015, the relationship progressed and they became a couple. But the two had only briefly met once, and every time it seemed like they were about to finally spend some quality time together in person, Jandu had an excuse. Still, Assi didn’t suspect she was being catfished right away, because the manipulation involved over 50 different characters and involved not just catfishing, but also identity theft and coercive control.
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The culprit behind the long-running catfish ended up being a member of Assi’s family, her cousin Simran Bhogal, who Assi considered a younger sister. Bhogal used the identity of someone Assi had briefly met before to weave an elaborate web of lies that went from friendship to a relationship and later, even an engagement. After Bhogal finally came clean with Assi in 2018, the radio presenter reported the matter to the police. However, after the police declined to pursue criminal charges, she initiated a civil suit.
The case was ultimately settled out of court, with Bhogal agreeing to pay Assi substantial damages as well as cover her legal costs. Bhogal also wrote her cousin a formal letter of apology. “Sweet Bobby,” a podcast by investigative journalist Alexi Mostrous at Tortoise Media brought the case into the general consciousness, unraveling what Assi went through and what she lost. The podcast was adapted into a Netflix documentary, which premiered on October 16.
Where is Kirat Assi Now?
Assi, who currently lives in London, consented to the documentary partly to raise awareness of the dangers of catfishing. The practice is not illegal in the UK. Talking about her experience with Sky News, she said: “People say, ‘How can you be so stupid?’ That’s the constant question you get. But none of us [victims] are stupid. It’s just the perpetrator’s gone the extra mile.”
“At the moment of her confession, I was screaming, ‘Why?’ But I’ve long ago let go of that… There’s just no reason to have done what she did,” she added. “Now, I just need to know how she did it.”
There were questions on her part, particularly considering all the tragedy that seemed to befall Jandu: he was shot six times in Kenya; was forced to go into witness protection in New York; suffered a stroke, brain tumor, and heart attack; and also fathered a secret child. But there were always people, many of them, from Jandu’s family, validating what was going on. That’s how deep the catfishing went.
“What happened to me is just one crazy story. You can’t make it up,” Assi says in the trailer for Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare. “We’re talking about 10 years of my life.”
Assi’s 2020 civil suit is believed to be the UK’s first successful claim relating to catfishing. And Assi hopes the documentary will give others the strength to question things and to speak up.
“There’s so much online abuse and bullying. There’s so much victim shaming, which stops people from speaking up… all of us have been suffering in silence,” she also told Sky News. And that’s the reason she’s speaking out. “The person that did it needs to be held accountable. I can’t bear the brunt of being blamed for bringing it out in the open. I’ve had to do what’s right for me.”
Assi is now back to her “old fiery self,” and dating again. When people realize who she is, she shared, they “have the shock of their life because they expect me to be a whimpering wreck”. But Assi is anything but that. Instead, she’s looking forward to the future again, even if she’s infinitely more careful. “It’s becoming easier to do it,” she also told Sky News about catfishing in general. “The crazy things that AI and online can do now are just getting worse. I feel like I’ve had a lucky escape that it didn’t happen to me now.”