hello it's alexi here the host of sweet bobby i wanted to let you know that sweet bobby is a production of tortoise media a newsroom devoted to slow journalism and investigating the stories that matter to listen to more tortoise media podcasts early and ad-free you can subscribe to our channel on apple podcasts or become a member of tortoise on our app i hope you liked this episode of sweet bobby wish me luck good luck all right i'm going up to simran's house now a couple of doors away a few days after episode three of this
podcast goes out i drive to west london one monday morning to try and talk to simran in person okay we're at the door i'm gonna ring the bell by now quite a few people have heard this show and simran's name it's out in the public and i'm thinking maybe that changes her calculations maybe now simran has more incentive to speak to me but still i recognize it's a long shot so as a backup plan i've written her a letter explaining why i think it's important we hear from her [Music] i think there's someone at the
window he's probably seen the microphone though a man who i think is simran's dad peers out from behind a curtain but just as quickly disappears and then i hear a female voice oh hello they have one of those video doorbells and the voice it sounds familiar yes i'm sorry to disturb you my name is alexi uh mostras from tortoise media and i i wondered if i could speak to simran bogle uh she's not here at the moment she's not here do you know when she'll be back um okay fantastic thank you very much i'm gonna
drop off a letter if that's okay and it would be great if you could um ask her to read it uh okay okay thank you very much i'm pretty sure that's simran on the intercom pretending not to be at home i'm putting the letter in the letterbox i think that was similar you know i think that that was a really oh hold on won't go through there you go right letter dropped off okay we have to go ah well that's all we can do as i walk away from the house i feel deflated all i've
heard from simran so far is the short legal statement you've heard at the end of each episode not exactly insightful and i have to face facts my chances of speaking to her aren't looking good [Music] i mean she sounded quite calm speaking through the doorbell so if it was simran she didn't seem particularly spooked or outraged that we'd come up to her door cool as a cucumber if my aim has shifted in these later episodes away from just reporting this story to helping hold simran accountable for what she did to kirat then i wasn't getting
very far but then again i'm just a journalist and i was thinking simran confessed to the catfish more than three years ago and back then kirat spoke to someone else an authority far better place than me to hold simran to account the police received evidence of simran's deception in 2018 so i wanted to know what have they done since and what are they doing now to help bring kirat some justice and it doesn't seem fair to me at maybe speaking on a personal level world on the legal level what do you think i think she's
been let down enormously by the authorities and i think they should have rigorously scrutinized and looked at whether there is an angle here to prosecute the case i mean it just doesn't seem fair that kirat is left in this position of devastation a whole world upside down years of her life taken away from her and meanwhile her perpetrator is able to continue living her life and and get on with it as normal [Music] i'm alexi mostras and from tortoise media you're listening to sweet bobby episode 5 injustice [Music] when kirat learnt that simran had been
bobby all along that she had been scammed by her cousin for so many years tricked into an online relationship well she didn't hang about kirat went straight to the police station that evening in london despite simran's parents asking her not to go and kirat didn't just go to the police because she was angry and upset although she was both of those things she'd been told to go by a police officer you see the real bobby who if you remember lived in brighton had reported simran to his local police station as soon as he found out
that she was behind it all but brighton police they'd told bobby that since simran lived in london that's where the case needed to be filed as far as brighton was concerned this wasn't a matter for them and a brighton police officer also told kira this he phoned her just after he spoke to bobby and this police officer he advised kirat to go to her local police station immediately why because he said a serious crime may have been committed one that she needed to report as soon as possible so when kira went to hounslow police station
that night she thought it would be the first step towards holding simran to account except it didn't work out like that at all we're in that sort of kind of a police cubicle thing and i was explaining and i said i'd been asked by brighton police station to come in um explained like an overview of what happened and he said you know i can't see that what crime's been committed against you you know you've just been duped kind of thing and i was like but this has happened excellent has happened i've been forced to do
this i was being bullied i was being intimidated i was scared for myself i was made to stop talking to people you know lots of things i explained all of this things that it was just a case of but the guys in brighton have had their identity stolen they need to report it in brighton so you were being told that the victims were in brighton the victims were the real bobby there are 43 police forces in england and wales in fact each region of the country has its own independent force and they're supposed to collaborate
but often this just doesn't happen what's the phrase sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing when kira went to her local police station that night on the evening of simran's confession i think that's what happened to her hounslow police told her bobby's the victim he's the one whose identity has been stolen whereas brighton police they were saying no no simran is in london so london is where the case should be looked at it was a frustrating situation and it was only going to get worse i was slowly beginning to realize
how crazy and fantastic the story was that people just weren't getting it what was for me so straightforward because it happened to me i know it happened it was suddenly creeping in that people going this is really crazy this is really stupid this is really weird this is what could this happen it's like too fantastic and their default position was not to engage with it yeah after her first meeting kira went back to hanslow police station a few days later first thing that happened is i'd walked in and we'd had the officer behind the desk
i'd cut my auntie to the cubicle and he said oh you know is she the right frame of mind did she is she a bit doolally basically the officer suggested that you might have mental health problems yeah that i might not be right in the head and i could hear him from where i was standing how did that make you feel i actually left the police station i walked out of that police station waiting room and i had a panic attack [Music] kira persisted that week she found herself in and out of hounslow it was
basically potluck whether she was listened to or not but there was one officer a female officer who seemed to get it she was very you know she was really good she was really empathetic she listened this seemed like progress the police seemed to say they'd investigate but then things went quiet and it was only in october 2018 almost five months after she'd first reported it that hanslow called kiratin again to give a video interview and let's just say it doesn't go great kira is interviewed for a few hours but the police officers are doing the
interview they have no knowledge of the case so kira has to start from the very beginning explaining how bobby first made contact all the way back in 2010 and that means she only gets about 20 minutes to go through the worst period the three years between 2015 and 2018 when she was in a controlling relationship with bobby and when i heard that i was thinking it took me about a week to get my head around kirat's story and that was with the benefit of legal documents so 20 minutes or so that's barely scratching the surface
so so you you felt when you got back in that the almost the most important section of the story certainly from the police's perspective that was rushed absolutely and i said it at the end and i was like so what's going to happen next then and she said well we'll need to take your phone which had other evidence on it and she said we'll probably bring simone in for questioning the police did take kirat's phone for evidence but they didn't bring simran in for questioning so they didn't get any insight from her about why or
how she did it and now three years later i'm struggling with exactly those same questions and one of the most frustrating things about this whole story which isn't being answered by anyone is exactly how simran pulled off the scam and it's something i've thought a lot about and i know it's something that many of you have questioned like how did she keep track of all these different characters and the individual lives she was impersonating [Music] sometimes i imagine a secret drawer in her desk filled with ring binders or a third computer screen alongside her other
two at the bank just used to send fake facebook updates and multiple phones and phone numbers because how else do you run a whatsapp group with so many fake people but even then how did she do the voices the skype calls [Music] because it wasn't just bobby remember by the end kirat was talking to four main characters men and women who were all simran so what are we saying was she a ventriloquist now as well i could pretend to have the answers to these questions but i don't like you and at least at this stage
i can only speculate akira has been able to offer some insight like when bobby told her that his voice had been damaged in hospital and that was why it might have been a bit higher pitched but even that feels like only part of the puzzle after her october meeting with hounslow police things seemed to stall and every time kira phoned up the station they'd fob her off maybe her story was too difficult maybe there was just too much social media evidence police forces in britain are notoriously bad at dealing with digital evidence even though in
this case kira tried to make it easy for them at this stage a family member was helping kira to compile evidence when we found specific evidence of certain things that we just screenshot it attach it in the title put a date for whatever brief description so everything was really easy for them oh literally she and even she was saying to me you shouldn't be doing this this should be them doing this it's like you're on trial here she kept saying why does it feel like you're on trial and how did you know how did you
know at this point and in fact in general that the police hadn't called in simran we were we're kind of making a very educated assumption that she hasn't been questioned by the police but we don't know that for sure oh no we know i've i know police haven't called her in they've confirmed that they haven't so this period in 2018 feels like a low point for curette she's doing everything she can to hold simmer into account and yet her claims just weren't being taken seriously and there was an added cruelty too around this time kira
hears on the grapevine that simran has got a big promotion at work and it turns out that was true i've seen the press release simran was made a vice president at a british bank you'd know the name and it was a pretty big deal plus her twitter feed it shows that she's recently gone on holiday to a wellness retreat her posts they mention yoga they have pictures of palm trees and sunsets and at the same time as this was happening kira was at home struggling with the police she was having nightmares she couldn't sleep and
worst of all she started getting anonymous texts and phone calls from an unknown number i've seen these messages they are pretty sexually explicit pretty nasty and when kira phoned the number she heard indian music in the background the same sort of music she heard in the background when she was speaking to simran's characters was this simran we've got no way of knowing for sure but it made kirat feel like this whole trauma was far from over i'd come to that realization that everywhere i turned doors were shutting and as i worked through the reasoning why
it all ended up with simran why was it difficult for me to get a job right now because of this because of that because of whatever because of what zimrin did why am i not in a relationship right now and is it going to be easy for me to be in one all comes back to simran you know am i ever going to be a mom maybe maybe not why you know i can't say all because you never know what's written in your future but that probability is reduced and reason why the high percentage of
it is simran at this point i started thinking maybe one of the obstacles kira was bumping up against was the word catfishing itself after all to many people it sounds like an online joke maybe someone pretending to be someone else on tinder to get a date more i don't know embarrassing than genuinely harmful and perhaps this is what the police were thinking that kirat was the victim of a prank that got out of hand serious yes but not a police matter and if this was the police's view it wouldn't actually be that unreasonable because catfishing
itself is not a criminal offence in britain it seems extraordinary to me but you can deceive someone online for years without any criminal consequences so however frustrated kirat was getting with the police maybe legally speaking they had a point but this case oh my god where to start what the hell is being going on is this really true charlotte proudman is a barrister she specializes in gender-based violence and coercive control i'm gonna have to have my notes up for this and normally i don't have my notes that when i do interviews but this one is
just so extraordinary and there's so much going on yeah there is so much going so much going on i just couldn't believe that someone could do what simran did and get away with it so i asked charlotte did simran do anything in her opinion to cure it which crossed the line into criminality and it just makes me think maybe you know maybe there is a criminal case here yeah yeah i think that there is i think looking at this hearing the evidence that's available to support it it does fit within the legislation and within the
guidance on coercive and controlling behaviour so certainly there seems to be a public interest in prosecuting this because this type of behavior should never be tolerated and there seems to be evidence available to support a prosecution what charlotte was telling me was that hounslow police actually had ample grounds to investigate simran bogle not for catfishing perhaps but for another criminal offence altogether coercive and controlling behavior has been illegal in england and wales since 2016 and what charlotte was telling me was that simran may not have behaved illegally by pretending to be bobby but she may
have crossed a line when she used bobby to control kirat to the extent that she did in my view it fits squarely within the current legislation forcing her to quit her job to quit her friends to stay at home waiting for bobby's call deactivating facebook to prove she's not flirting with other people he's prone to mood swings blames her for this she turns down a promotion because of the stress of dealing with bobby the fact that she had to be signed off with stress losing weight just six stones charlotte told me that coercive control might
not be the only law that simran breached she may have broken laws preventing harassment sexual offences and something called the malicious communications act and the police response to all this given all those potential breaches was it justified in all the circumstances according to charlotte that's a big fat no yeah i think it was quite interesting to see that the police had asked her whether she or or in fact not even asked but asked an aunt whether she was suffering from psychiatric or mental health conditions that was their response so again victim blaming suggesting that she's
somehow complicit in this deception and web of lies because she's mentally ill rather than recognizing that actually this could potentially happen to anybody and i think the police either finding it too difficult to get involved with or thinking that it's a family incident it's a family affair or as it's referred to it's just a domestic no crime committed here something that i see quite a lot on police records what would what do you think should have happened i think that they should have carefully looked at whether the offense of coercive and controlling behavior was made
out i mean we've been through the different limbs of coercive and controlling behavior and i think arguably it is made out on the evidence that's available and i question whether the police actually looked at all of that evidence and i question what evidence that they receive from simran hey amber how are you doing good morning nice to see you likewise how are you good you look tired like me yeah well it's been a busy week in october 2018 kirat didn't have access to charlotte like i did in fact months after she reported simmering to the
police it looked like she was running out of options despite handing the police evidence that simran had coercively controlled kirat through bobby the investigation was going nowhere and then came a chance meeting with a guy called amrit mann so welcome to my humble abode punjab coffin guards and all rows lead to the pin job come on in imagine if a fairy godmother owned an indian restaurant and you'd come quite close to amrit this is where the story all started for me this was where i first met you and i first met kirat he's the fourth
generation owner of the punjab an institution of a restaurant in the middle of covent garden in central london and he's the type of person when you meet him once you don't forget always smiling always wearing a suit we've been here since the early 1950s the walls of the restaurant aligned with pictures of celebrities who have eaten his food this gentleman over here is a shaheed a freedom fighter he was a very close friend to my great grandfather the founder of the punjab the place is like a character itself and everyone in the story has been
here at one time or another the punjab is where i first met kirat and our initial conversation was fueled by king prawn booners and chicken madras you have some drive well you got some good food to keep us all going and it was also where kira first met amrit in autumn of 2018 around five months after simran's confession and she didn't know then that he would help revitalize her case i've come here to hear how that happened and we're sitting in a private room upstairs a place amrit calls his war room there's a dumb waiter
that runs directly up from the restaurant below and you'll hear it clunk when it arrives well should we start should we just start with the start basically which is how did you first meet kirat yep it was um 3rd of october 2018 uh she walked in she had a meeting with me because i had signed up to this crazy television advertising for an international um channel and kira had turned up to sort out the terms of a business contract she was working for a punjabi tv channel and they were planning to showcase amrit's restaurant but
i picked something up and i don't know what it was i remember and i was intrigued um shakespeare always says that the eyes are a window to the soul and i picked something up and i looked and i looked her eyes i knew something was not right and i knew she was suffering in silence despite not mentioning her case emerit felt that there was something not quite right and towards the end of the meeting she mentioned she dropped this nugget this golden nugget that she had the legal case i'm talking to the police it's not
going anywhere amrit thought he could help because he isn't just the owner of the punjub she had no clue that in my spare time i am a pro bono solicitor and i work with victims of crime a few weeks later and kirat was back in the restaurant and this time she revealed a little bit more about what happened and it was all about listening it took me up to about three months for the pain to drop to understand fully the the magnitude of the whole body the fake bobby stuff um [Music] but from day one
from that second meeting in person i believed her did she give you the the witness statement at this point around this point that she had prepared no that came later that came later so this was just you didn't even have a written document to rely on no no just my mind my fragile mind even with amrit's legal background it took him a long time to appreciate the full extent of what had happened but as soon as he did he became kirat's supporter finally someone she could rely on to fight her corner i i never get
emotionally connected to my clients but this one i don't know my blood boiled and i put down to my mum's linkage my mom's blood would get quite emotional and i felt angry i felt this is not right this is appalling so with that kira had the first member of what would later become a team around her and team kirat wasn't going to settle for the police doing nothing i said okay let's go let's go to the police station let's go and find out what's the status so turn up suits and booted we've cured it and
suddenly no one wants to come down no one wants to see us they took offense why was there a lawyer there and the investigating officer was doing her job we just want to just ask her where are we how can we assist how can we support how can we you know help with investigation but it just was clear they wanted us to go away [Music] while amrit was putting pressure on the police to give kirat an update they also decided to go down another route if simran dodged criminal liability they thought maybe she could be
held accountable in the civil courts although amrit was a solicitor he acted more as an informal advisor to kirat so kirat looked for another lawyer a specialist and she found him just by googling something like catfishing lawyer and seeing what turned up and the lawyer she found a guy called yeya cohen is actually someone i know from way back he is a specialist in online harms and internet stalking and together amrit yeya and kirat they drafted something to simran called a letter before action which is basically a letter telling someone that you're thinking of taking
legal action against them eventually got to a point where we're ready ready to serve kirat's letter accused simran of misusing her private information harassment and breach of data protection laws when you were going for the civil case um what were your kind of objectives what did you want to get out of it reputation that's it and that involved what you hope would be a public apology yes and i thought it would happen really quickly i thought she'd be just scared by the legal letter and do what she needed to do but it wasn't the case
when she got the letter before action simran didn't buckle in fact she did the opposite she doubled down she was going to fight and this this is very interesting in terms of simmering psychology something that feels like a puzzle that we're constantly trying to put together because i would have thought the same as kirat here's someone who has already confessed who had a good job who wants to get on with their life wouldn't someone in that position cave to a legal threat wouldn't they just want it all to go away but once again simran defied
expectations simran's lawyers they came back with this kind of allegation that simran was young and harker was an adult simran was a child and cure went ballistic oh she's on the phone um to be accused of that was awful and again i think i think the lawyers even used the word grooming yeah yeah simran called in her lawyers and they argued something pretty extraordinary despite her double confession once to bobby and then to kirat the lawyers argued that simran was the real victim they accused kirat as an adult of grooming her younger cousin while she
was still at school in fact i know exactly what they said because i've seen the letter it is our case that your client groomed our client to play her part in this elaborate but ludicrous interaction we would agree that there has been extensive manipulation but it is the defendant's case that this has been carried out by your adult client now i should say i've seen cases where lawyers go off on one acting aggressively to try and make the claimant back down but ultimately a legal response reflects the position of the client so when i quote
from these legal letters i have to presume that they broadly represent simran's own view and simran's lawyers also claimed that kirat had always known that simran was bobby and why should kirat have allowed that situation to continue well simran's lawyer said and again i'm quoting because kirat received the tension and excitement in what otherwise may have been a life absent these ingredients and there's more they threatened to go public with their allegation if kirat pursued the case further i mean that's seriously harsh to me the letters are very clearly victim blaming basically a loyally way
of saying you asked for it you knew what was happening all the time when kirat received these letters last year it was a massive blow and if i was her honestly i think i'd be pretty close to giving up because despite amrit and yai's help kira seemed no closer to holding simran to account almost two years after the confession the police investigation was going nowhere and simran had come out all guns blazing yeah so it's outrageous so i just thought that's so low and so disgusting of you you've already confessed so the tactics reinforced your
determination it just told me how low she was as a person how low she was willing to go to scare me and intimidate me into silence so i just stuck to my guns it was terrifying but i'm just you know something the truth is the truth [Music] next week on sweet bobby the final episode kirat makes a breakthrough in her case but simran has one more card to play and i ask bobby if he'll do something he's never done before meet kirat for the first time since the truth came out while making the series simran's
lawyers gave us this statement on her behalf 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 and 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 [Music] thanks for listening to this episode sweet bobby was written and reported by me alexey mostris produced by gary marshall with additional reporting and production
by claudia williams sound designers by carla patella the executive producer is basha cummings [Music]
