Amrit Man (6:33)

I think she's been let down enormously by the authorities and I think they should have rigorously scrutinized it and looked at whether there is an angle here to prosecute the case. I mean, it just doesn't seem fair that Kirata's left in this position of devastation, a whole world upside down, years of her life taken away from her and meanwhile her perpetrator's able to continue living her life and get on with it as normal.

Alexei Mostras (7:05)

I'm Alexei Mostros and from Tortoise Media, you're listening to sweet Bobbie. Episode 5 Injustice. When Kiret learnt that Simran had been Bobbie 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 at 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 Kirat 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 Kirrat 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.

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Amrit Man (9:48)

Plus.

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Get ready for your next True Crime binge.

Kirat (9:55)

It's all a blur. My Aunt Elsa called me and she just said get to the hospital. The doctor came in and told us that there's really not much more that they could do for her and that we need to go say goodbye.

Sword and Scale Host (10:09)

This doesn't happen to people like me. A new True Crime 10 part series from the makers of Sword and Scale launches March 3rd. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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Charlotte Proudman (11:18)

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, explained like an overview of what had 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. X amounts 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 these 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.

Alexei Mostras (12:02)

So you were being told that the victims were in Brighton? The victims were the real Bobby?

Charlotte Proudman (12:06)

Yeah.

Alexei Mostras (12:10)

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 Kirat 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.

Charlotte Proudman (12:59)

I was slowly beginning to realize how crazy and fantastic the story was and that people just weren't getting it. What was, for me, so straightforward because it happened to me. I know it happened. You were suddenly creeping in that people were going, this is really crazy. This is really stupid. This is really weird. This is. What could this happen? It's like too fantastic.

Alexei Mostras (13:21)

And their default position was not to engage with it.

Charlotte Proudman (13:24)

Yeah.

Alexei Mostras (13:26)

After her first meeting, Kirat went back to Hounslow police station a few days later.

Charlotte Proudman (13:31)

First thing that happened is I'd walked in and we'd had the officer behind the desk. I'd called my aunt into the cubicle and he'd said, oh, you know, is she the right frame of mind? Is she a bit doolali?

Alexei Mostras (13:46)

Basically, the officer suggested that you might have mental health problems.

Charlotte Proudman (13:51)

Yeah, that I might not be right in the head. And I could hear him from where I was standing.

Alexei Mostras (13:57)

How did that make you feel?

Charlotte Proudman (13:58)

I actually left the police station. I walked out of that police station waiting room and I had a panic attack.

Alexei Mostras (14:10)

Kirat 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.

Charlotte Proudman (14:25)

She was very, you know, she was really good. She was really empathetic. She listened.

Alexei Mostras (14:29)

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 Hounslow called Kirat in 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 officer 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 Kierat's story. And that was with the benefit of legal documents. So 20 minutes or so, that's barely scratching the surface. So you felt when you got back in that almost the most important section of the story, certainly from the police's perspective, that was rushed.

Charlotte Proudman (15:45)

Absolutely. And I said it at the end and I was like, so, what's gonna 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 Simran in for questioning.

Alexei Mostras (15:59)

After her October meeting with Hounslow Police, things seemed to stall. And every time Kirat phoned up the station, they'd fobber 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, Kirat tried to make it easy for them. At this stage, a family member was helping Kirat to compile evidence.

Charlotte Proudman (16:27)

When we found specific evidence of certain things that we just screenshot it, attach it in the title, put a date, put whatever, brief description. So everything was really easy for them. Oh, literally. 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?

Alexei Mostras (16:46)

And how did you know at this point, and in fact, in general, that the police hadn't called in Simran? 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.

Charlotte Proudman (17:00)

Oh, no, we know, I know. Police haven't. They've confirmed that they haven't.

Alexei Mostras (17:05)

So this period in 2018 feels like a low point for Kierat. She's doing everything she can to hold Simran to account, and yet her claims just weren't being taken seriously. And there was an added cruelty, too. Around this time, Kierat 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, Kirat 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 Kirat 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.

Charlotte Proudman (18:35)

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 Simran 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 mum? 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 high percentage of it is Simran.

Alexei Mostras (19:21)

At this point I started thinking maybe one of the obstacles Kirat 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 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.

Amrit Man (20:18)

This case. Oh my God, where to start? What the hell has been going on? Is this really true?

Alexei Mostras (20:27)

Charlotte Proudman is a barrister. She specializes in gender based violence and coercive control.

Amrit Man (20:32)

I'm gonna have to have my notes up for this and normally I don't have my notes up when I do interviews but this one is just so extraordinary and there's so much going on.

Alexei Mostras (20:41)

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 Kierat which crossed the line into criminality. And it just makes me think maybe, you know, maybe there is a criminal case here.

Amrit Man (21:05)

Yeah, yeah, I think that there is. I think, looking at this hearing, the evidence that's available to support does fit within the legislation and within the guidance on coercive and controlling behavior. So certainly there seems to be a public interest in prosecuting this, because this type of behaviour should never be tolerated. And there seems to be evidence available to support a prosecution.

Alexei Mostras (21:31)

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 behaviour has been illegal in England and Wales since 2015. 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 Bobbie to control Kierat to the extent that she did.

Amrit Man (22:05)

In my view, it fits squarely within the current legislation.

Alexei Mostras (22:10)

Forcing her to quit her job, to quit her friends, to stay at home waiting for Bobby's call, deactivating Facebook to.

Amrit Man (22:18)

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.

Alexei Mostras (22:30)

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.

Amrit Man (22:55)

Yeah. I think it was quite interesting to see that the police had asked her whether she. Or in fact, not even asked her, 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.

Alexei Mostras (23:39)

What do you think should have happened?

Amrit Man (23:41)

I think that they should have carefully looked at where the offence 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 received from Simran.

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Charlotte Proudman (24:32)

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Alexei Mostras (24:35)

Okay.

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Sword and Scale Host (24:48)

Get ready for your next True crime binge.

Kirat (24:51)

It's all a blur. My Aunt Ilsa called me and she just said, get to the hospital. The doctor came in and told us that there's really not much more that they could do for her and that we need to go say goodbye.

Sword and Scale Host (25:05)

This doesn't happen to people like me. A new True Crime 10 part series from the makers of Sword and Scale launches March 3rd. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Alexei Mostras (25:23)

Hey Amra, how are you doing?

Simran Bogle (25:25)

Morning.

Alexei Mostras (25:25)

Nice to see you.

Simran Bogle (25:26)

Likewise. How are you?

Charlotte Proudman (25:27)

Good. You look tired.

Simran Bogle (25:28)

Like me.

Alexei Mostras (25:29)

Yeah, well, not enough. In October 2018, Kirat didn't have access to Charlotte like I did. In fact, months after she reported Simran 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 Man.

Simran Bogle (25:57)

So welcome to my humble abode. Coffin Garden. All rows lead to the Punjab. Come on in.

Alexei Mostras (26:03)

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.

Simran Bogle (26:33)

We've been here since the early 1950s.

Alexei Mostras (26:36)

The walls of the restaurant are lined with pictures of celebrities who have eaten his food.

Simran Bogle (26:41)

This gentleman over here is a Shaheed, a freedom fighter. He was a very close friend to my, my great Grandfather, the founder of the Punjab.

Alexei Mostras (26:49)

The place is like a character itself. And everyone in this 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 Chikhin Madras.

Simran Bogle (27:05)

You have some drive.

Alexei Mostras (27:07)

Well, you got some good food to keep us all going. And it was also where Kirat first met Amrit in autumn of 2018, around five months after Simran's confession. And she didn't know then that he would help revitalise 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 dumbwaiter 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 Kierat?

Simran Bogle (27:48)

Yep. It was 3rd of October, 2018. She walked in, she had a meeting with me because I had signed up to this crazy television advertising for an international channel.

Alexei Mostras (28:01)

Kirat 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.

Simran Bogle (28:11)

But I picked something up and I don't know what it was, I remember and I was intrigued. 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.

Alexei Mostras (28:33)

Despite not mentioning her case, Amrit felt that there was something not quite right.

Simran Bogle (28:39)

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.

Alexei Mostras (28:50)

Amrit thought he could help because he isn't just the owner of the Punjab.

Simran Bogle (28:55)

She had no clue that in my spare time I. I am a pro bono solicitor and I work with victims of crime.

Alexei Mostras (29:02)

A few weeks later, Ankirat was back in the restaurant. And this time she revealed a little bit more about what happened.

Simran Bogle (29:10)

And it was all about listening. It took me up to about three months for the pain to drop to understand fully the magnitude of the whole Bobby, the fake Bobby stuff. But from day one, from that second meeting in person, I believed her.

Alexei Mostras (29:28)

Did she give you the witness statement at this point, around this point that she had prepared? No, that came later. So this was just. You didn't even have a written document to rely on?

Simran Bogle (29:38)

No, it was just my mind, my fragile mind.

Alexei Mostras (29:43)

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.

Simran Bogle (29:58)

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 mum's blood would get quite emotional and I felt angry. I felt, this is not right, this. This is appalling.

Alexei Mostras (30:18)

So with that, Kierat 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.

Simran Bogle (30:29)

I said, akharet, let's go, let's go to the police station. Let's go and find out what's the status. So turn up suited and booted with Kirat and suddenly no one wants to come down, no one wants to see us. They took offence. Why was there a lawyer there? And the investigating officer was doing her job. We just wanted 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.

Alexei Mostras (31:09)

While Amrit was putting pressure on the police to give Kierat 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 Kierat. So Kierat 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 Yair Cohen, is actually someone I know from way back. He is a specialist in online harms and Internet stalking. And together Amrit, Yeheir 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.

Simran Bogle (32:04)

Vinci got to a point where. Where we were ready, ready to serve.

Alexei Mostras (32:09)

Kierat's letter accused Simran of misusing her private information, harassment and breach of data protection laws. So when you were going for the civil case, what were your kind of objectives? What did you want to get out of it?

Charlotte Proudman (32:24)

Reputation. That's it.

Alexei Mostras (32:27)

And that involved what you hope would be a public apology?

Charlotte Proudman (32:30)

Yes. I mean, 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.

Alexei Mostras (32:43)

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 Simran's psychology, something that feels like a puzzle that we're constantly trying to put together because I would have thought the same as Kierat. 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 Bogle (33:23)

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 Kira went ballistic. Oh, she's on the phone. To be accused of that was awful. And again, I think, I think the.

Alexei Mostras (33:50)

Lawyers even use the word grooming.

Simran Bogle (33:52)

Yeah, yeah.

Alexei Mostras (33:53)

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 that Simran was Bobby. And why should Kirat have allowed that situation to continue? Well, Simran's lawyers said, and again, I'm quoting, because Kirat received attention 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 lawyerly 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 Yair's help, Kirat 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.

Charlotte Proudman (36:20)

Yeah, so it's outrageous. So I just thought, that's so low and so disgusting of you.

Alexei Mostras (36:28)

You've already confessed, so the tactics reinforced your determination.

Charlotte Proudman (36:33)

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.

Alexei Mostras (37:20)

Next week on Sweet Bobby, the final episode, Kierat makes a breakthrough in her case. But Simran has one more card to play. 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. An investigation by the Metropolitan Police into Kiratasi's case found that that their officers made significant efforts to understand her account, but they concluded that no existing laws were broken. Thanks for listening to this episode. Sweet Bobby was written and reported by me, Alexey Mostras Produced by Gary Marshall with additional reporting and production by Claudia Williams. Sound design is by Carla Patella. The executive producer is Basha Cummings.

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Alexei Mostras (39:26)

Forever.