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 [Music] is so it's thursday and i've just arrived outside the radio station i was scared as i was leaving and i'm scared now it's the first
time i'm doing the show since sweet bobby went live since the podcast came out kira hasn't presented her regular show but for the first time she's on her way back to desi radio i don't know if people will know what i've been through because i haven't put anything on my socials very much and like i've always been private on my socials so and as kira is preparing to go back on air we're putting together this final episode it was going to be all about closure about getting her life back on track despite everything including all
the tensions and complications within her own punjabi sikh community and it's still all about that but we've basically had to rewrite the end of the series because something new came to light something unexpected just as we were putting together the finishing touches i get a call from kirat and it's a call that for the first time really gives me insight into why simran did what she did the closest i think i've ever gotten there was a phrase that she used which bothered me she honestly believed that we were both in a dark place and living
in this kind of alternative reality of this fantasy world that she'd created was bringing us both some kind of happiness and joy and then the fact that she's only just realized that it wasn't any kind of fantasy for me [Music] i'm alexi mostris and from tortoise media you're listening to sweet bobby episode 6 motive [Music] for me it makes no difference i know i know her and i don't know who she is and i've known her since she was little girl that's nilesh a childhood friend of kirat's questions and getting an answer it is what
it is we just worried about her well-being doesn't matter how it happened and how she was gullible at the end of the day he's reacting to an apology letter signed by simran bogle the person who catfished kira for almost a decade we want her to move on we wanted to be you know well and find a happy life that's that's what we want more than anything else by 2020 two years had passed since simran confessed to this monumental deceit but when kirat sued her in court her lawyers came out all guns blazing they accused kirat
of grooming her while she was still at school it's a pretty astonishing and incendiary allegation and it was yet another blow for kirat after so many years of struggling now she was faced with an expensive legal battle but then suddenly simran changed tack one day in spring this year 2021 simran offered to settle the case and what does she write this to you directly to you or um it's an apology letter it's like a formal apology letter to me um and i'm allowed to show a limited number of people so i have to tell her
who i'm showing it to so she even knows who i'm showing it to you it meant after years of fighting kira would finally get a small payout and more importantly simran agreed to give her a written apology but simran's lawyers had one more card to play the apology came with strings attached no it's a private apology straight to you so it comes straight to me and the court knows i'm getting a private apology but they also know who i'm showing it to i'm not allowed to say what the contents are to anybody else no one's
allowed to have a copy of it make a copy of it anything and i put your name down on the list of people that i want to show it to you kira had wanted a public apology something that could be read out in court but simran would only settle if the apology was private or at least semi-private she insisted that kirat could only show the apology to about 30 people and even worse none of the people on the agreed list could make any copies of the apology or tell anyone else what it said when kira
heard this she was furious it felt like an extension of the control simran had tried to keep over her that same dynamic again simran or bobby or whoever calling the shots kira argued with her lawyers telling them that it just wasn't good enough but it wasn't just this that kira was unhappy about she also felt like the wording of the apology was just too vague so she rewrote it herself making it more punchy and simran agreed to sign this version but she still insisted that it couldn't be public kira felt deeply uncomfortable about this but
she was being told realistically this might be the best she was going to get so she agreed to settle on these terms a semi-private apology that wasn't even in simran's own words but still this was the only documentary proof that kira had of simran's guilt so when kirat showed it to those closest to her to some of the pre-agreed list of 30 friends and family i wanted to be there and to be honest i kind of imagined tears and emotion but actually that was a miscalculation nilesh's take seemed to be that the apology made no
difference either way he'd support kirat no matter what all he said was that maybe in future kira would be less gullible maybe learn to ask more questions but it's that very perception of you like saying gullible is that that's like for me it was a problem because i don't think i was gullible it was like she'd gone out of her way to do this to me and this is the thing like lots of people think you must have been so gullible you must be so gullible and i kept like challenging that and things have been
it is i mean alexa you've been through the evidence you've seen and read like god knows how many conversations but you can see i'm like challenging all the way through i'm arguing i was i tried to get away i tried to get out of the relationship but i was just emotionally blackmailed into staying into it but it's just like that whole perception and this is the thing the perception of what i don't want people to have of me now is that i'm gullible or i'm vulnerable because i've stood up to her [Music] i've spent a
lot of time with kirat by now and i know that for her the details really matter and when people like nilesh tell her to move on as well intentioned as that is it's missing the point she wants people to understand the details of the scam to ask questions about how it worked because the more you understand that the sophistication of it all the less you'll think she's gullible and the more you'll think [ __ ] maybe this could have happened to me and that all applies to her own family too [Music] my dad's upstairs you
can really leave my dad on the phone constantly he's just in denial i've told he knows you're here right totally in denial it's so difficult for me in that sense if my dad's in denial can you imagine our community when are you going to show him the letter i've offered three times sitting there on the top but yeah it's just he doesn't want to to know i don't know what's going through his head i don't know whether he feels ashamed of me scared of the family i don't know but it's the kind of genuine i'm
guessing it's the fears that you'd have in our community that but it doesn't make it easy for me kira is still struggling to talk about what happened with her own family she lives with her mom dad and two younger brothers but since all this was revealed neither of her parents have really wanted to talk about any of it and despite kira having this apology letter for months her dad still hasn't read it so i really wanted to speak to him and the fact that her dad just doesn't seem to want to know i do find
this really sad because i've heard kirat speak about him with great affection in the days after simran's confession for instance he was the person she most wanted to protect her so i had to go and tell this of the family who had been supportive and been talking to him too i remember at that point i was sitting in their living room trying to explain all of this and um just felt like a vulnerable little girl again and you just want your dad i just just wanted my dad my dad was in kenya and i knew
i couldn't tell him because i didn't know what would happen i didn't know how he'd feel kira's dad was often away in kenya for long periods and he wasn't there when simran revealed that she was the catfish so i really wanted to speak to him to hear his reaction to simran's apology not just because i wanted this for kirat but because i thought it might also give us some clues about how their wider community would treat this story too should we go in and see whether we can speak to let's do it yeah yeah let's
yeah let's see does he know we're coming no hey mr percy nice to nice to see you again almost as soon as we step into the hallway the same hallway where simran confessed three years ago kirat's mom ushers us into the living room and offers us cardamom and tea and just as i'm thinking about how to persuade kirat's dad to speak to me i hear him walk down the stairs nice to meet you thank you thank you so much what a lovely house at this point we're all sitting in a circle in kiret's living room
her dad is opposite me looking quite uncomfortable kira sitting next to him about a meter away not making much eye contact she's on her phone and her mum is sitting kind of over my shoulder watching us it's all quite tense i we we don't want you to speak about anything that you don't know it would just be interesting to get your perspective as clear as dad how'd your tea before you get something this is delicious yes it is very unfortunate that this happened anyway it shouldn't happen to anybody and i really i'm sad that it
happened that that's all i can say really i thought that if kirat's dad was going to do an interview we'd have a bit of time to prepare at least enough time for gary my producer to get the mic set up properly but as he started talking i realized it was now or never i think when when these this came into i'm saying game came in the media or it wasn't i just read it on the internet and it is quite baffling to read that it's quite shocking as well and i went through it and aghast
simply across and i think i i can't even believe that it happened it should not have happened i feel like kirat's dad does not want to read this letter that he thinks he's got as much information as he needs from what he read online if it's if you were willing i think it would be really interesting to see what you thought of the apology letter because i think actually even more than the stuff on the internet it it tells you what what has happened so do you if kira gives it to you would you do
you mind reading it and tell telling us what you think i don't mind reading it obviously i i don't mind reading it obviously i'm the dad anyway so you can't say what's in it yeah oh yeah you can't say what's in it you can't describe what's in it basically even if i read it and and uh whether i read whether it read or not you know my my my confusion would be what i've just said to you it should not have happened it is it is sad that this happened but it should not even happen
to anybody else but kira passes it to him anyway and while he reads we wait i remember the clock ticking in the background adding to the tension okay i mean she's gone through hell basically it's over and i hope she gets on with her life and do you do you think this will let and let her get on with her life now do you think this is closure i believe it it will it'll sort of calm her down in in many ways it's uh it's something maybe it's deeply hurting to her and i've been totally
oblivious believe me i've been totally oblivious i just explained to you for most of the time i did not know anything about it let's say until i met amrit and amrit with her that is the only good time and at that given time i was told not to involve myself in any matters this is you don't have to answer this but i i have a daughter and and if i imagined that in 20 years time she had been tricked and scammed in the same way as as kira has i would be very upset and angry
and i wonder if you are it's a difficult question to answer it is upsetting but then over a period of time lots of things happen from your teens up to up to time you get married there are ups and downs agreements between people even during university times and things like that you agree to get married and then something happens that is the most upsetting thing in life but it is upsetting it doesn't go out of your mind all your life so i really i'm sorry for anybody i'm sorry for kirita i'm sorry for simran it
shouldn't have happened are you sorry for her i'm sorry i'm just like what the hell are you sorry for her look sorry i'm saying i'm saying sorry it should not have ever happened but why you say why do you feel sorry for her look it because like myself to do this no no no listen to me what what i meant because she did something wrong the grandfather is very badly hurt okay and i thought sorry i'm saying sorry that it should not happen because the grandfather are very decent people you feel sorry about the situation
the grandfather yes but not simran or the situation yeah not before i yeah it shouldn't have happened sorry that this happened but it shouldn't have it hurts the whole family it upsets the relationships you know you you cannot get on with life not as before so it is upsetting now i should say this is obviously a difficult moment for kirat and she probably would have reacted just as strongly if anyone had suggested they should feel sorry for simran not just her dad and her reaction this tension is all bound up she told me in a
sense of guilt for letting her family down for exposing them to hurt [Music] thank you very much i mean that was like you know we don't want to to push it um at all we're just very grateful very grateful and we know it's we know it's quite hard my last comment is that the parents were very decent the grandfather is such a decent person believe me honestly they're from a decent family why this has happened is beyond my understanding anyway it's totally beyond my understanding i've told kira's moment even previously i've told kira i do
not know the girl i do not know simran i haven't talked to her you can put that in the dad has never talked to kids that has never talked to this girl [Music] when kirat's dad finished speaking a lot of stuff fell into place for me i'm pretty sure that he doesn't understand anywhere near the full extent of the scam [Music] and you can literally feel can't you how uncomfortable he was he seemed to be battling within himself between protecting his daughter on the one hand and not rocking the boat and on one level i'm
thinking maybe this is understandable this is an older guy from a community that both experts and kirat have told me is quite patriarchal quite traditional plus he's got complex ties to simran bogle's family i mean simran's dad was best man at kirat's parents wedding why me it's just like why me it's a huge question it's such a huge question it's just like i don't understand i reckon that we're going to get to the end of this podcast series i never know i've made my piece with not knowing it's always difficult to come to a conclusion
even if you are similar why she did it she will not give you a she will not give you an answer why did that so that is a really good point she might not know herself [Music] the question of simran's motivation keeps coming up of course it does it's pretty much all anyone i talk to about this show wants to know why did she do it and how like the nuts and bolts of it a few days ago a woman who knows simran got in touch through a third party this woman remembers going on a
hen do with simran just a few years ago and she says that simran didn't go out that night the night of the due because she apparently had to jump on some business calls to america on skype and this i find particularly interesting because if what simran was actually doing was calling kirat as bobby it shows that the scam was taking over her life almost as much as it was taking over kirats while kirat was fighting simran in the civil courts her legal team kept pressing the police to act yet by march 2020 almost two years
after the confession the investigation that had gone nowhere so just as the pandemic was hitting kira issued a formal complaint and 13 months later in april 2021 she finally got a response and basically they'd said there's nothing to answer for the conclusion was because we we've got the document that they sent back to you and the conclusion was while i have absolutely no doubt that you have felt victimized by the events described in your allegation i can only concur that the behavior described while morally objectionable does not violate any existing legal statute [Music] the complaint
board upheld hounslow police's decision to drop the case they basically said they did the right thing kira was devastated [Music] and it was evident that they didn't listen didn't understand the complexity of the case and that we had the right to appeal to the iopc the independent office for police conduct the police just focused on the sexual aspect they felt have any regard for the coercive control the controlling behavior element the malicious communications the harassment and and this 10-year deception they just did not grasp the case [Music] i've seen the document dismissing her complaint and
the only offence it mentions is the sexual offences act the police don't seem to have considered any other potential crimes since this podcast came out we've heard from many other people who've been through similar experiences to kira people who've been tricked for years by catfishers often with devastating psychological consequences and all too often the police have refused to engage [Music] so it really genuinely surprised me when against this pretty bleak backdrop kira phoned me recently with some positive news the iopc the independent body that investigates the police had looked at kirat's case again kirat had
written to them to make one final appeal she'd actually got amrit to send it figuring they might take it more seriously if it came from a solicitor and the iopc it found that the police hadn't properly considered kirat's evidence and the upshot is hounslow police may have to reconsider their decision to drop the case against simran kira is actually meeting an officer next month to go through everything including the critical period where bobby was controlling her and i'm thinking hopefully this time kirat will get more than 20 minutes to explain a few days before this
episode was due to come out i have what's supposed to be a final conversation with kirat and we're sitting in her bedroom at home and it's one of the first times when i've been able to ask her about the iopc decision what do you hope happens now in in light of the iopc decision i hope that everything gets taken seriously i mean i don't wish harm on anybody but she's got to be accountable and responsible for her behavior and if there are laws and if she's broken a law she needs to like face the consequences
of what she's done and it's it's not that i'm being nasty here but that's what it is it's justice it's i know that this might be one of my last chances to ask here at some of the questions that have been on my mind throughout making this series some questions that i know you've been asking as well i suppose let's let's just address the the how question because it's something that a lot of people are asking about and i suppose the main question that we're getting is how simran was able to do all those voices
like how do you think she was able to do it for me it wasn't that many voices it was including her own which is herself there was another four i think but how could she go from how could she uh compellingly go from a man to a woman to simran to someone else without you recognizing that well bobby has a different accent and he was obviously not well and that whole thing had been explained to me and then when you're speaking to somebody over a period of two or three years it kind of normalizes itself
you just accept that that's his voice now the fact that i knew he'd lost his voice during the stroke and medics and other people had you know the medical team had told me he's lost his voice he can't talk he can't move he's only got this bit of movement in him left and even when we're doing those initial calls he couldn't speak to me so i was getting reports of his voice therapy he's going to his voice therapy session today and then after about almost a year um of him having voice therapy and you know
his rehab he had another stroke and lost it again so um his voice never went back to exactly how it was he had his accent but you you you were also speaking to at least one other person i'm going to get the initials wrong maybe yj that was right at the end in 2018 right but yj was a man he hadn't had any damage to his voice and simran was yj so what what did that voice sound like initially he'd only call me and cry it was after his sister was unwell and he'd never called
me before but that it was like he'd call me then hang up and it'd be lots of crying and crying and crying because his sister was severely unwell and he was leaning on me for support and i think he was also being used a distraction technique from me asking bobby the 60 million questions of what the hell's your problem kind of thing jj and yj's voices came into play so much later that because they sounded slightly different but there was a similarity enough for them to think that they're from the same family but i was
i think at that point i was constantly being shouted at i was in a really bad place and that probably clouded my judgment i did think it i did like okay oh but he does sound like him but you don't you forget because you've been speaking to bobby for two and a half years with this voice which is you don't think like that you think they're brothers you just and i was a state at that point if simran is listening to this podcast and listening to this episode do you have a message for her you
brought this on yourself but i don't know if you grasp what you've done and how you've impacted my life or other people's lives just i just want you to wake up and understand how many people you've upset including your own family i'm not accepting the blame for that i'm not accepting the blame for anything here i haven't done anything wrong what do you think the future looks like i don't know i have no idea i know what i want it to look like but what do you want it what do you want it to look
like i'd like to be just like happy good lucky me or i am without whether i'm lucky but i'm just like the happy like spirited person i am just be that person without any worry um you know move out i have my own place find somebody if i could have a family you know obviously that's something now the big thing that she's upset in my life whether i could can or can't have a family i don't know and just do all the things i wanted all those years of where i wanted to travel so much
and she knew i wanted to travel and do these things and we'd plan you know we've got we me and bobby had pinterest boards of holidays and stuff and you know but just because that happened she's not allowed to take that away from me i'm still going to do those things for myself even if it wasn't with bobby bobby wasn't real and i've accepted that and that's what lets me i just keep saying that wasn't real it was real to me at the time i've accepted that it's not real now i've spoken out now this
is now going to be attached to me for the rest of my life i can't run away from this but at the end of the day there's nothing there's no shame in it there's no embarrassment in it because if you were in my shoes you probably would have done the same [Music] [Music] i thought this was where we were going to end but then there was that phone call i mentioned at the start the one that changed this whole final episode hey kira how you doing kirat had been speaking to her friend about the apology
letter the one that simran had signed but didn't write the one that she had shown her dad and she said you know it's so unemotional and i just remember trying to think of a time when she was emotional and i suddenly remembered that this had been sent to me as a draft apology to see if i would accept this but it was only for my eyes and it was the most emotional thing from her in any sense kira had received another apology letter before the one that ended up in the settlement and this draft apology
letter had been written by simran herself this one was much more personal it was written directly to kira from simran and simran wanted kira to keep it to herself if kira had accepted this letter a completely private apology as the basis of her settlement then she could never have shown it to anyone else instead she insisted on a version that could be shown to her close friends and family those 30 pre-agreed people i mentioned earlier so this draft apology sent in early 2021 kind of got forgotten about it became just another document in a long
list of emails and drafts that keira received leading up to the formal settlement even now kirak can't show us this original direct apology for legal reasons but i did ask her if she could give me the gist of it because this letter is really important it's really the only document kirat has that gives any real clues about simran's motivation about why she did it and it's written in simran's own words i mean i suppose my first question is do you remember how it how it started like what did she how did she open it how
did she what did she say to you at first um you know it was a it was an emotional letter um and it was all like you know she she would change everything if she could and it was all very gushing and um you know i'm sorry for all the hurt i've kept pain and calls and all that kind of you know what you'd expect somebody to say um so she said she opened it with an apology yeah i mean she did yeah it didn't it wasn't yeah sorry for the hurt i mean we've been
thinking as you know so much about simran's motivation like what made her do it what made her it was the same as what she'd said when she'd confessed that she was in a dark place though i mean that exactly the words that she used when she came home and confessed kirat remembers the letter opening with simran explaining how this whole thing got started about how she was struggling with things going on in her personal life she had other issues too and then how she met kira for the first time as a teenager and thought that
they just clicked and then how the lies just snowballed out of control what else do you remember the letter saying i mean i'm absolutely fascinated because this is the first time that we've really heard anything from simran in her own words about why she why she did it i mean i was really upset with this letter she thought i was okay um i think some kind of there was a phrase that she used which bothered me she honestly believed that we were both in a dark place and living in this kind of alternative reality of
this fantasy world that she'd created was bringing us both some kind of happiness and joy and then the fact that she's only just realized that it wasn't any kind of fantasy for me and it wasn't bringing me any kind of happiness that really i mean that really sticks out for me and then and then is there any indication about in the letter about why she allowed it to kind of continue what did she say about why she allowed it to get to the stage it did in the letter she said something along the lines of
she had wanted to leave you know she said she'd try to end it um and the reason that she was so nasty to me and so cruel to me using those characters was hoping that i'd leave or i'd she'd push me away and i'd just leave and be easy for her so what was she saying that she was she was purposefully nasty to you in order to try and make you break up with her with bobby yes but then bobby would always have a heart attack or a stroke and i didn't have to come back
in so i don't understand and why didn't did the letter say anything about why she didn't stop it herself that was her effort i guess so she she on the on the surface of it if you didn't know anything about her or this or the context the letter itself is a pretty fulsome apology yeah i think anybody else reading it would think differently to me that it's emotional and heartfelt and that she's really feeling pain did you believe that no i mean no i didn't think it was genuine at all it was all about herself
just explain why why because as you said on the face of it it seems like quite a heartfelt apology so just explain the reasoning behind why you thought the opposite she could have sent that to me ages ago she could have stopped it being filed to court she could have why did she only recognize all of this now did she not recognize it when she confessed [Music] our team is split on this one i agree with kirat if she's remembering correctly what's in the letter then it doesn't ring true for me at all after all
it came only after months of aggressive tactics from simran's lawyers and simran knew that it could only ever be seen by kirat and no one else so all that stuff about her being in a dark place and being sorry i find it very difficult to believe and she seems to have had no trouble getting on with her life whereas gary and claudia they think that maybe the letter does offer an insight into simran psychology they think that if simran knew the letter would only be seen by kirat maybe she felt like she could reveal more
but there's only one person who can say for sure and if you're listening simran we'd still like to hear from you and we're going to stick with this case whatever happens not least to see if the police reopen their investigation because true justice is yet to come for kirat there is one thing though that i found out right before recording this final episode i found out that simran is no longer in her high-powered job that at some point between august and the time when this podcast went out she left now i don't know why she's
no longer there but it does perhaps feel like a step forward towards some sort of accountability towards consequences i know the question of why simran did what she did is tantalizing but it might not be the most important thing here because with or without a clear explanation of motive kirat does seem to be on her way to recovery she's still got a whole bunch of issues to work through financial professional but she's back on her radio show she's got her supporters people like amrit she's even been on a few dates and despite everything that's happened
to her she's finally able to start reclaiming her life so from me until next time go well go safely keep smiling this is garrett signing out on the bungalow show remember look after yourselves and one another today [Music] 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 school girl 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] you
