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Hello, it's Basha Cummings here. I'm an editor at Tortoise, which is the home of Sweet Bobby, Hoaxed and many more award-winning investigative podcasts. I'm here to tell you about Tortoise Investigates, where we curate the best of our chart-topping investigations in one place. Everything from extraordinary tales of deception to a suspicious killing to one mother's decades-long fight with the police. Just search for Tortoise Investigates wherever you get your podcasts.
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When I first found out who the catfisher was, it didn't feel as satisfying as I thought it would. In fact, I found out I had more questions than answers. Not least, why did she do it? And how did she do it? I mean, here was this bright, young, ambitious woman, a former head girl, a high flyer, who created this elaborate world of lies and tricked her own cousin for more than a decade without any discernible motive.
So I was wondering, could we find out what was going on inside Simran Bogle's head? Because despite the reporting I've done and all the people I've spoken to, there were still big parts of this story that lay beneath the surface. So I had a lot of thoughts. But my first thought was, I want to speak to Simran. Now I'm going to try her mobile. We don't know if it's still in use. This is the only one that we've got. But...
It's the first step in trying to get a hold of her, to see what she has to say. I mean, if she does stay on the phone, I've spoken to Keira about what Keira wants to ask her. But the key question is, is why? I've been rounding my head on this question. Not just why would Simran do what she did, but why did she target Keira in particular? And why Bobby? OK, what do I press? This button? OK. Make sure it's on. OK.
But even as I press the call button, I know it's a long shot. I mean, Simran has a lot to lose. Despite confessing three years ago, she's still in her job at a top firm in the city. She recently got engaged. She's going on the holidays, to parties, everything you'd expect a 29-year-old woman to do, which incidentally is the same age that Kirat was back in 2010 when Bobby first made contact.
So for all these reasons, I'm pretty sure Simran Bogle is not going to appreciate my call. Okay, there we go. Hi, is someone speaking? Hey, is that Simran Bogle?
Hello? Hi, Simran speaking. Hey, sorry, I think we're getting cut off a bit. Is that Simran Bogle? It is, yes. Hey, I'm sorry to bother you out of the blue. As you can hear, there's a lot of background noise on her side of the call. But she does pick up. She's made some allegations against you and as responsible journalists we wanted to make sure that
You were aware of them before we published them so that you could respond to them if you want. I mean, it's totally your choice about whether you want to say anything, but I just wanted to make sure that you knew what we were going to say. But then she seems to hang up on me. I'll try again. She might have cut off. You are calling. He's unable to take your call. Please leave your message after the tone. Well, it's difficult, isn't it? Because it's almost as if
She might have said something else if we hadn't told her exactly why we were calling. But I guess you have to explain up front what you're doing. Ah, at least we heard her voice. At least we heard her voice for the first time. It's frustrating, but it's kind of expected. I send her a follow-up text, just in case she got cut off, but I don't hear anything back. Okay, so do I need to do the whole... shall I do the whole thing?
After the call with Simran, I head down to the studio to record an advert for this podcast. So we're saying, and one woman uncovering the truth. And when I was in there, I get a phone call. So as you can hear, I start to leave the studio to take the call outside until Gary, my producer, starts shouting at me through the glass to get back in front of the microphone. And it turns out it was Simran's lawyer. Yes, it is Alexi Mostrath. Hi there, sorry.
So it makes me wonder if, on some level, she's been expecting something like this to happen. I understand that you've contacted Vogel. I will send you over some questions. And, you know, we want to reflect the substance of Simran's response in our publication. But we also really want to speak to Simran. The call lasts for about 20 minutes. It's the last thing I do on that Friday. No worries. Have a good weekend. Take care now.
And you know what? It feels significant. Now Simran knows exactly what we're doing. And I suppose it leaves her with a choice to make. She could speak to me directly and tell me her side of the story. Or she could keep her distance and let her lawyers handle it. So that was interesting. So we sent the text message at 17.07 on a Friday afternoon saying,
1745, so basically half an hour later, her lawyers call me up. So she's obviously gone straight to them. At least now we've got a point of contact. And I suppose that Gary and Claudia and I have to think this weekend about how to respond on Monday in a way that's not only going to make sure that she responds to our questions, but that she actually is incentivized to come and talk to us. I don't know how we're going to do that.
For the moment, at least, Simran is refusing to answer my questions. But speaking to Simran isn't my only option to understand more about her. I decide to go back, all the way back, before even Bobby's first message to Kirat in 2010. Because, as it turns out, Simran has done this before. I'm Alexi Mostras, and from Tortoise Media, you're listening to Sweet Bobby. Episode 4, Dark Triads. Simran, since I've known her...
has always been the perfect daughter, the girl that we were always proud of. She fits that kind of stereotypical good little South Asian Punjabi Sikh girl, academically brilliant, well-behaved, quiet, smiles and nods when she needs to. But she's a psychopath. She's a narcissist. She's a psychopath.
She's not right in the head. And obviously that was always a part that she played because that's how she wanted to be seen. Underneath it all, I don't know what goes on. Really don't know what goes on. Simran confessed to the catfish in June 2018, standing on Kirat's doorstep, telling her, it was all me. And you might think that for Kirat, this was a moment of closure.
She now had confirmation that Bobby and the entire cast of characters she had been speaking to for over 10 years were all fake. Finally, she could get on with her life. But actually, it didn't quite work out like that. Simran was the one that got on with her life. And Keira found herself more and more isolated. I've never seen her. I've not seen her since that day. I don't know how I'd feel if I saw her again.
Because nobody believed me, because everyone's wondering what I'm doing with my life, because she made me look like a loser to everybody. Simran only lives 20 minutes away from Kirat in Hounslow, West London. So it wouldn't be unusual for them to bump into each other at the temple, the gurdwara, or at a party or whatever. And yet, despite Simran being the perpetrator and Kirat the victim, it was Kirat who found herself staying in.
It was almost like she had the power to say, I'm going to stay here. If you want to leave, you can. So I wouldn't go anywhere. On a couple of occasions, like, I don't know, I've had a gut feeling, like, if I go somewhere that she's going to be there. And I've said to my family, I'm not going. I said, it's not because I don't want to go. I want to go, but I don't know what I'd do if I saw her. I don't know if I'd fall apart. I don't know if I'd go for her. I don't know what would come over me. I...
I've not even contemplated seeing her. I feel angry with her and her immediate family for trying to cover it up and not doing the right thing. The same day that Simran confessed, her family came round to Kirat's house. Kirat describes it as a save-our-daughter mission. It wasn't a case of actually wanting to do anything to support me, help me and genuinely be sorry. I tried to explain things to them. I explained how she's
poverty needs help. I'd cry and the dad would tell me to stop crying because of his own blood pressure. It was quite cruel. Did her parents apologise? They were like, we'll help you, you know, anything, we'll pay your money back, everything that she's made you lose, you know, just please don't go to the police. And I didn't say I wasn't going to, I just said, I'm just going to do whatever I need to do.
And it wasn't just Simran's parents. Other members of her community were putting pressure on her too. Everyone I tried to speak to was like, just get on with it, Giret, just move on, it's OK. But nobody was in my shoes. Nobody understood what I'd been through, what I'd lost, the abuse that I'd endured. The knowledge that she had about me, of me and my family. The fact that I hadn't been able to mourn my grandmother, who she knew I was very close to.
Kirat was really close to her grandmother. She was one of the few people who knew about Bobby from the start. And when her gran got sick from cancer in 2017, Kirat sent Bobby her medical reports. He was a cardiologist after all, and he knew other doctors. One time, Bobby even got on the phone with Kirat's gran to talk to her about her treatment. I'm glad my gran isn't around to see this.
And when the treatment didn't work, and Kirat's grandmother went into hospital for the last time, she wanted to talk about Bobby. She asked for forgiveness for not being able to stay alive long enough to see them married. My gran asked forgiveness. Asked for his forgiveness for not staying alive long enough to see him on her deathbed. That's how cruel she was.
And she knew she was doing it as well. That's the worst thing. She knew exactly what she was doing. It was cruelty like this that persuaded Kirat to ignore Simran's parents. She wasn't going to give this up. She wanted the police to investigate her case. And Kirat wasn't the only one. Bobby had also reported Simran to the police, telling them that she was the person who had stolen his identity. Because a few hours before Simran confessed to Kirat,
She had also confessed to Bobby. When she sent the confession, I had to read it twice and it was a bombshell. It was a huge moment of relief, shock. Like this weight had been lifted but at the same time so confused. So confused that how is that even possible? Bobby and his family were pretty shaken up. Bobby phoned Brighton police to tell them it was Simran.
But they told him that since she lived in London, there wasn't anything that they could do. In a way though, it helped Bobby to know that Simran had done it. At least there wasn't some faceless perpetrator who'd stolen their information. So they got on with their lives, tried to forget the whole thing. But it was actually only after I contacted Bobby that he decided to do some digging himself into how this whole thing got started. Because Kirat's nightmare didn't start with Bobby.
Remember JJ from episode 1? Bobby's younger brother. As far as Kirat knew, JJ was going out with Simran when they were both about 17 and JJ had messaged Kirat on Facebook in 2009 to ask her for some big sister advice. But he had died suddenly, a few months after making contact. It was JJ's death that opened the door for Bobby to contact Kirat a year later. By now you'll be unsurprised to hear that JJ is in fact very real and very alive.
And he still has some text messages from Simran that shed a lot of light on this case. It was in 2008 or 2009 that she added him on Facebook and he added her. And in May 2010, my brother came over for a holiday where they met for the first time, purely as friends. They liked each other and they decided to keep in touch online.
A year goes by, my brother took a gap year to then try and figure out where he's going to go. It's then at that stage he goes to India and a few months later, this is in March 2011, while my brother and Simran are having this online relationship, my brother gets contacted by a cousin of Simran, supposedly by the name of Nikki. Simran had been in a hit and run accident.
A series of messages from Nikki saying how serious Simran's condition was. The words unstable, in and out of consciousness, heavily dosed on medication, the next 24 hours critical, lost a lot of blood. These are words that were used in these messages. And asking how far are you and can you come to her deathbed essentially.
Bobby is telling us two important things here. Firstly, back in 2009, when JJ first contacted Kira for relationship advice, well, he wasn't going out with Simran at this point. They hadn't even met in person. But I guess that's not that bad. I mean, which teenager hasn't exaggerated a relationship? Yeah, my girlfriend's really hot. You don't know her. She goes to another school.
But the second thing that Bobby was telling us was even more important. It turns out Simran was not only catfishing Harkereth, she was, while in a relationship with my brother, catfishing him at the same time with fictional characters that I can only assume are fictional because of how crazy some of these stories are. Something no one knew, not me, not Kira, no one.
Bobby had proof that JJ was being catfished by Simran at the same time as Kirat. JJ was another victim. We couldn't find out which hospital or anything about the situation. So I told my brother to sit tight. He was quite upset. But something didn't add up. Bobby's scepticism seemed justified. A few weeks after, JJ was told that Simran was on death's door in the ICU. She posts a photo on Facebook.
My wife happened to be on Facebook or some social media platform and she saw a picture of Simran Bogle on a profile skydiving in Dubai. This is the girl everyone is saying, you know, like your brother is saying he really wanted to come and see because she was dying. It's not rocket science. You are not allowed to jump out of a plane if you have a heart condition.
Okay, so then what happened? Simran makes a full recovery and they continue to chat online. In Jan 2012, all of a sudden, this new character called Jasmith, a cousin, supposedly, a doctor, female cousin of Simran...
messages my brother saying that Simran's health has deteriorated again and she's back in hospital and in for a procedure that'll take a few hours. And after that, a few messages, there seems to be some misunderstanding that took place between this Jasmith doctor and Simran. That's interesting because that happened with Kirat a lot. And what's interesting here is how much I'm recognising the pattern.
A central character becomes incredibly ill. They're in hospital, maybe even about to die. And then other characters, sometimes family members, sometimes doctors, make contact with the catfish's primary victim. For Kirat, her central character was Bobby. For JJ, the central character was Simran herself. And what I found quite spooky was that the characters that tricked JJ, they felt familiar.
So I went back, and I looked at Kirat's witness statement. And there they were, the same characters with the same details, cropping up in minor roles in Kirat's own story. So not only had Simran created a world for Kirat, she seemed to have created an entire universe, one where characters crossed over into at least two different catfishing operations.
And you met her, am I right in thinking? Briefly. And she seemed like this normal, timid, friendly face that not in a million years could do this. So you don't even think this is possible from someone like that. You almost think you could see the type of person. You could almost judge that person by what they look like. But she's the last person in a lineup I would choose as guilty person.
for this whole story. So, was JJ at the centre of everything? Had Simran, this quiet, timid, academic girl, developed an obsession with Bobby's younger brother that got totally out of control? Maybe something happened between them that set her down this dark path. Or maybe it was nothing to do with JJ at all.
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I recently tracked down a friend of Simran's from her school, someone who knew her at the time when all this started.
And this friend remembers Simran getting caught setting up other Facebook profiles. Nothing to do with JJ. Nothing to do with Kirat. The friend wouldn't speak on the record. They said they were too scared of the backlash. So I sent them some questions over email. And I asked Claudia, who's been helping me report this story, to read out their responses. The first thing I asked was how they found all this out.
Me and my friends only became aware of the fake profiles as Simran would regularly upload holiday photos on her Facebook page. We found it surprising that she managed to travel so much, which led us to look into her posts in more detail. When we viewed the likes and comments under her posts, we found a number of comments from people with foreign names, which I'm unable to remember, but it was always the same people commenting and liking all of her posts. Most of the profiles had no profile picture and were only created within the year.
Also, some of her photos she had uploaded looked way too professional to be taken with an ordinary camera. When we looked into these in more detail, we were shocked to find the exact same images on Google Images. It was only then that we knew something wasn't right and that the situation was getting out of hand. And then I asked about Simran's motivations. Did anyone ever ask her why she did it?
I assume it was for popularity. Even though Simran was known by most in our year group, I don't think she felt like she'd got the attention that some other girls may have done, and I think her motivations were to compete with them through achieving more likes and comments on her Facebook posts. She didn't admit to her motives or give an explanation, but I'm fairly sure it was a cry for attention or popularity. And finally, I asked the friend if Simran was upset when she had been found out. How did she react?
I think she was more shocked that we had managed to find out. She didn't quite know how to respond or justify her actions and was simply apologetic. This must have all happened when Simran was around 16, 17, in college, very young. And to be honest, a lot of teenagers probably exaggerate on social media. Plus, this was in 2008, 2009, in the early years of Facebook, when nobody really knew what they were doing. But it's different now. She's an adult.
And to be honest, I'm not even sure that today Simran realises the fallout from what she did. For me, finding out that Simran had catfished before was a huge step towards understanding her character. But I still know very little about her motivation. Was it power? Sex? Money? Or something else? I'm going to get a bit pretentious now, so I apologise in advance.
But I want to talk about a play. It's my favourite play, actually. It's Othello by Shakespeare. And when I was driving around Brighton with Kirat, reliving some of her darkest moments, Othello crept back into my mind. If you haven't seen it, it's about a military commander who, despite being black in 16th century Cyprus, rises to become the head of the whole Venetian army.
He marries Desdemona, a beautiful and wealthy Venetian lady, and for a while it's all good. But then one of his officers, a man called Iago, tells Othello that Desdemona is unfaithful, and he manipulates other characters to make his story ring true. Driven mad, Othello eventually smothers Desdemona to death. Iago is exposed just too late, but he always refuses to explain why he did it.
And critics have been puzzling over Shakespeare's play for years. What were Iago's motivations? Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the romantic poet, this is double pretentious, came up with a theory. Iago didn't care about any of the usual things. Revenge, jealousy, nothing like that. He was instead a motiveless malignity, which meant that Iago destroyed Othello for no other reason apart from he could.
And look, I'm not saying that Simran is some sort of Shakespearean baddie. No one was murdered. But nothing that she or anyone else has told me explains her actions. There is no clear motivation. She did get some money from Kirat, but not that much. This wasn't one of those romance scams that drain the victim's bank account. And sex might be part of it? We just don't know. That's what Harvey, Kirat's friend, wondered.
But then again, that doesn't explain all the other fake profiles, the other lies. So maybe Simran tricked Kirat, a bit like Iago tricked Othello, simply because she could. Do you think this is the most extreme case of catfishing that you've come across? In terms of the complexity of the narrative, yes. It's truly remarkable.
Chris Hand, who you heard briefly in episode one, is a psychology lecturer at Glasgow University. And he said that some catfishes, particularly complex ones, display certain characteristics. And together they're known, a bit dramatically, as the dark triad.
So someone who's really high in Machiavellianism, you know, someone who really gets their jollies out of, you know, bending people to their will. People that are high in narcissism, you know, that really inflated sense of self and people that are high in everyday psychopathy. You know, those kind of classic, they're called the dark tetrad or the dark triad of psychological characteristics. Those would be your typical catfishers.
I often think back to what we've been told about Simran failing to express regret. Kirat and her friend Harvey, they both say that Simran didn't apologise when she confessed. And I think about another moment too. On the day before the confession, Kirat remembers driving home with Simran from Hounslow police station. Kirat was crying, even throwing up. But right next to her, Kirat says, Simran sat calmly, playing a computer game on her mobile phone.
The lack of maybe contrition or empathy or emotional diversity of expression
is something that's fascinating because again, it might tie in with that thing about people not realizing the consequences of their actions. They might not, you know, they might not care or, you know, they might just not perceive that they've done anything wrong. That would typically suggest someone who maybe lacks a bit of empathy, maybe has problems with emotional intelligence,
maybe scores a little higher in some of these dark triad dimensions. But at the root of it, it could just be that they genuinely don't see that what they've done is problematic.
We spoke to Kirat's best friend Harvey and she has a theory that this was so complex and so kind of well put together that it had to involve more than one person. How likely do you think that that is? I think we do often look for ways to make ourselves feel better. It would be a
a good psychological defense mechanism to try to, you know, to build this narrative about multiple perpetrators. Because in that case, you know, you're probably more likely to receive sympathy if you've been targeted by multiple perpetrators.
you're maybe less likely to be victim-blamed. But it is entirely possible that a single perpetrator with sufficient motivation and, you know, the intelligence, the cognitive flexibility, the problem-solving skills, a little bit of technical nous, it's quite feasible that a single person built this narrative. I've spent a long time looking at the thousands of messages sent between Simran and Kirat.
And to me, these messages show a manipulator working at the top of their game. Whenever Kirat starts to doubt Bobby, Simran tells her how much he loves her, tells her she's spoken to him personally, or promises that he's just about to propose marriage. It seems to me incredibly manipulative. This is just one of many examples. Kirat texts Simran, I'm angry at how much effort he goes to to get what he wants and to deceive me. And Simran replies to Kirat,
He loves you like crazy. He does, and you know it. Even after the confession, Simran doesn't seem to take responsibility for her own behaviour. I recently found this text that she sent to Kira a month later. I hope you're OK and being the strong person that you are. I've genuinely lost a big sister and a best friend. And again I'm thinking, there's no sorry in that. We were trying to look hard at motivation.
because there's almost no clues as to motivation in this case. And I'm genuinely torn between thinking, well, maybe there just is no motivation or trying to look for one quite hard and wondering, you know, is it financial? Is it psychological? Is it sexual? Is it all three? How important is motive in these cases?
Motives are absolutely crucial for two reasons. One, because I think we know that victims need to understand why they've been victimised. You know, that's an absolutely crucial part of the process. But also as researchers and legislators and as members of the public, we need to know about motivation too.
What Chris was telling me was that there's a value in speaking to perpetrators like Simran to understand directly what makes them tick. You know, research tends to focus much more on the victims, but we don't yet know enough about perpetration. We're going to make quite a big effort to try and find Simran, the perpetrator, and talk to her. What kind of things do you think I should ask her?
Oh, that's, you know, that's a bit of a wish list, isn't it? I mean, I would be interested in finding out whether they would do what they allegedly did again to either the same person or another person. I would be interested in
finding out if they recognise why the alleged victim is upset. I would be interested in finding out about if they had at any point considered stopping what they were doing. Usually, when you try and find out something about a person as a journalist, the general rule is, if you keep going, you'll get there.
Something almost always comes up. Social media, videos, something. But with Simran, despite weeks of looking, we find almost nothing. And that was almost certainly intentional. All her social media accounts are either closed or have been made private. There are little clues online. She describes herself as a traveller, a workaholic, a gym-goer. Her Instagram profile reads, a bit spookily, Simran Bogle.
the world through my lens. And we've picked up some clues from the real world too. One person who went to her engagement party remembers Simran asking everyone not to post any photos online. But apart from those breadcrumbs, there's really very little. So despite being head girl at her school, a university student, an employee of several really blue chip companies, despite all of that, basically Simran is a ghost.
Slow down for a second as we're going past. OK, yeah, I think that's her house. All the curtains are drawn. I'm outside Simran's house in West London. It's a nice area. Big suburban roads, tall trees, smart cars. She lives here with her family. I'm here a few days after episode three of this podcast has gone out, the one that names Simran as the perpetrator, because I'm hoping that now she might speak to me face-to-face.
But if not, I've written her a letter, which gives her some options of how she can get in touch if she wants to tell her side of the story. I'm quite nervous. Why? Because potentially it's been quite traumatic for them. Potentially there's been quite a lot of pressure on Simran and her family. Suddenly this thing that they've kind of avoided talking about for three years is out in the public. So I imagine there's been some kind of heated conversations in that house and
I feel like I'm stepping into that. What do you think the dad might say if he opens the door? I think the dad might be really angry that, you know, we've turned up at his doorstep wanting to speak to his daughter, who he's probably quite protective over. We were told that Simran is the apple of his eye. But I suppose what I want to try and make him or Simran or whoever answers the door understand is that this isn't about confronting them. This isn't about kind of accusing them
or getting their reaction for any dramatic effect. This is genuinely wanting to know Simran's side of the story because we do only have Kirat's side at the moment. And we have no reason to doubt anything that Kirat says, but knowing about what Simran's state of mind was at the time, knowing why she did it, knowing anything about the background of her actions, that will help us understand and help the listeners understand Simran
And it might even kind of turn her from being this sort of, I don't want to say villain, but like two-dimensional character into someone that's human and someone who we understand a little bit better than we do now. But I still don't think they're going to be friendly. Should we go and do it? Okay, we're at the door. I'm going to ring the bell. Next week on Sweet Bobby...
We take Kirat's case to a specialist barrister and ask why the police failed to investigate. Plus, Simran's lawyers play hardball. 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. Thanks for listening to this episode. Sweet Bobby was written and reported by me, Alexi 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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