Sweet Bobby's Kirat Assi Tells Us About Life Now After Catifishing

Kirat Assi takes a deep breath, pausing the interview for a moment to wipe away a tear.

It's been two years since Assi first came forward with her story on the "Sweet Bobby" podcast , but the feelings are still raw. She's revisiting it once again for a Netflix show of the same name.

"It was a nightmare toward the end," Assi tells TODAY.com from London.

For about nine years, Assi thought she was involved with a cardiologist named Bobby Jandu — first as friends, then eventually as an engaged couple. They began speaking on Facebook Messenger. Both from the same London Sikh community, Assi felt immediately comfortable with Bobby. Plus, they shared an acquaintance: Assi's younger cousin, Simran Bhogal, who had dated Bobby's younger brother.

In fact, she was speaking to someone posing as Bobby — who is a very real person. The real Jandu appeared in both the podcast and Netflix show, sharing his experiences hearing of the "shocking" catfishing scheme.

Assi watched on as Bobby went through major life changes, some of which were very traumatic, like a brain tumor, a stroke and a near-fatal shooting in Kenya, plus a divorce, a remarriage ... and time in the witness protection program.

In 2015, Bobby said he loved Assi. The two began a relationship despite having only had one in-person conversation in a bar years prior.

"In the beginning it was nice," Assi says of her romantic relationship with Bobby. But a few months after it started, the relationship became "quite scary." She "didn't understand the switch" into coercive control and emotional abuse. He monitored where she went, what she did, who she texted. And yet they still couldn't meet in person.

It reached the point where Assi says she was a "shell of herself." She recalls "rapidly losing weight" in October of 2015. "I was just bones," she says.

In 2018, Bobby missed Assi's grandmother's funeral, causing Assi to give him an ultimatum: Either he fly to London to see her or the relationship was over. Bobby, she says, booked a ticket and a hotel in Kensington. But Assi became suspicious when Bobby still wouldn't see her. After hiring a private investigator, she found that Bobby had a permanent U.K. address.

There, she came face-to-face with Bobby, who was married with a child — not divorced, as he had said. And he had no idea who she was.

Then came the twist. Assi's cousin, Simran Bhogal, confessed to posing as Bobby online all along. She said she was also behind upwards of 50 Facebook profiles, who were part of a web to confuse and convince Assi.

For both the Netflix documentary, which premiered on Oct. 16, and the podcast, Bhogal provided a statement but did not agree to an interview.

"This matter concerns a family dispute over events that began over a decade ago, when I was a schoolgirl. As far as I'm concerned, this is a private family matter that has been resolved. I strongly object to the numerous unfounded and seriously defamatory accusations that have been made about me, as well as details of private matters that have been shared with the media," the statement reads.

Assi filed a police report against Bhogal, but as there are no laws against catfishing in the U.K., it wasn't pursued at first. The case has since been re-opened. Bhogal has not been charged.

TODAY.com has reached out to Bhogal for comment.

Where is Kirat Assi now? Her life 'changed dramatically' Assi tells TODAY.com that her life has "changed dramatically" since the catfishing incident. Word traveled fast in their "interconnected" community — and it led to "silence" falling around her, she says.

"Lots of people just don't know what to say," she says. "Some people (have) just been too polite, or they don't want to rock the boat. They don't want to upset me. I always say, just speak, just say something. I'd rather you not hold stuff in and if you've got questions, just say something."

Amid scrutiny, she's trying to retain a sense of self. "Hopefully, I'm still the same me that I was before," she says. "So, I'm still a bit crazy, still like to party, still into my traditional side of my things as well."

But she's had to work "extra hard" to go back to normal, she says. When she first started talking to Bobby, she was a marketer with a popular radio show. During the relationship, she gave up her radio show after Bobby accused her of flirting with a guest.

She's returned to the radio show now, which she hosts once a week.

"I love it. The listeners are lovely. The following on radio is lovely. And I enjoy what I do because it's about my culture and my heritage and the Punjabi language. I have lots of fun on the show, and hopefully the listeners have fun with me," she says.

As for work: She has her own marketing company, but she says she's not currently employed because she's too busy dealing with the catfishing incident.

"Because of all of this, I'm scared of sabotage, so I don't really share too much about what I do (on social media)," she says.

Though she met Bobby online, she says she's not "scared" of social media itself, but she is wary of what she posts.

"I'm on socials," she says. "I use them sensibly, and I'm very, very careful. That's all I can do, right?"

Her dating life now Before Bobby, Assi had been in an on and off again relationship with the same man since she was 18. While she is not currently seeing anyone, she has gone on dates since Bobby.

"It's not that I'm scared of dating people," she says. "Everybody is not that person, and everybody can't do what that person did."

She says she looks at the Bobby catfishing incident like a "bad breakup."

"You have a bad breakup, or something bad happens, and you lose your partner, and you think, 'Oh, I'm never going to be in a relationship again, I'm never going to do that again,'" she says. "But then you do. So, you have your period of healing, moving on, dealing with stuff. (I'm) not saying it wasn't traumatic."

Whereas breakups are somewhat universal experience, this, she said, was lonely.

"Nobody around me understood what was going on," she says. "I had to do it by myself, and I had to put on the front for so many years until I could speak about it, because nobody believed me before then. So just, I've always been one of those people that just gets on with stuff, but I just had to get on with it and do."

Where things stand with her cousin Simran When Assi initially filed a police report detailing her accusations against Bhogal for the catfishing incident, police said legally there wasn't anything they could do since there are no laws against catfishing in the U.K.

Assi started to look for other routes to get justice, bringing evidence of the catfishing to lawyers.

"Police had been ignoring her for many, many years, and by the time she came to see me, she pretty much had nowhere else to go," Yair Cohen, Assi's lawyer, tells TODAY.com. "She exhausted all her possibilities, and she came in with a box of folders, and she said, 'Oh, you know, this is what happened to me.'"

Assi took Bhogal to civil court over the catfishing case in 2020, which they ended up settling out of court in 2021. As part of the terms of her settlement, Bhogal paid Assi "substantial damages" and legal costs and also gave her a private apology letter, which Assi spoke about on the podcast "Sweet Bobby."

After the release of the "Sweet Bobby" podcast and an Independent Office for Police Conduct complaint Assi filed, the police re-opened Assi's case, which Cohen said was "far overdue."

"It's kind of happening, but it's very, very slow," Assi says. "I was hoping it would be done before the documentary, but, yeah, it's not happened."

Cohen also tells TODAY.com that he is now representing the "real Bobby" in a "separate proceeding" against Bhogal.

Initially, Assi says she wanted to know why Bhogal decided to catfish her, but today she doesn't need that answer anymore. She's not even sure if she'd believe an explanation, if offered.

"I don't think I care about why anymore, to be honest," she says. "You obviously question it at the time. You just wonder why, (but) nothing could justify how far that person's gone."

"I don't think I could ever believe anything that came out of their mouth anymore," she adds.

Now, years after the incident, Assi wants more public accountability.

"I just want her to take responsibility for her actions, and put her hands up and just say, 'Look, I did this.' Tell us how she did it, and allow herself to be held to account," she says.