Bobby Jandu was unknowingly having his identity used for nine years through 2009 to 2018 in what is thought to be the UK's longest-running catfishing case.
Based on a 2021 Tortoise Media podcast series of the same title, Netflix's new documentary Sweet Bobby examines the shocking true story of Kirat Assi, a radio host whose life changed forever after she connected with what she thought was a mutual friend, cardiologist Bobby Jandu, on Facebook.
The two seemed to have shared friends from London's Sikh community, with Kirat's cousin Simran Bhogal even being a mutual connection between the pair. Despite never meeting in person, Kirat and Bobby would go on to get engaged, though after their plans to see one another face-to-face repeatedly fell through, Kirat took it upon herself to hire a private investigator to find her fiancé's address and confront him in person herself.
“I'm the one who has put myself in the firing line, and it's not easy.”
But when Kirat did end up on Bobby's doorstop in Brighton, while he looked like the person she thought she had been speaking to online, Bobby had no idea who Kirat was, with him threatening to involve the police out of concern for his family and friends.
So where did it all go wrong?
In fact, it came to light that Kirat's cousin Simran had been stringing her along all these years in an incredibly complex, far-reaching catfishing scam, with Simran having created a network of 60 separate Facebook accounts (using both real and fake identities) to add layers of credibility to it all.
At the centre of this network was Bobby Jandu, whose real account was mimicked by Simran who catfished her cousin for nearly a decade. While Simran keeps a low profile these days, we also can't help but wonder: who is the real Bobby Jandu and where is he now?
Where is Bobby Jandu now?
As is covered in the Sweet Bobby documentary, Kirat happened to run into the real Bobby mere months into her relationship with the fake Bobby (Simran). With Kirat out for a friend's hen do at a nightclub, after she approached Bobby to chat and he didn't recognise her, she put his confusion down to him drinking and the busy nightclub they were at.
Kirat would later meet the real Bobby in Brighton again after getting a private investigator to track him down, only to be told by Bobby that he had never spoken to her before.
Today, however, Bobby Jandu still lives in Brighton with his wife and two children.
Bobby regularly shares photos of his work as a dental surgeon on his Instagram, while his wife Sanj Jandu recently wrote a children's book titled An Adventure A Day which according to her Kickstarter page for the project “tells the story of a disabled child in normal every day life”.
On the page, Sanj explains “Being a mother of two incredible kids, one 7 and one 3 years old, I’ve read countless of children’s books to them over the past years. My 7 year old son has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair as well as other mobility aids. One thing I’ve noticed while reading them these stories is that there is not enough representation for children with disabilities in these books. I want to change that.”
Here's everything we know.
