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What if the person you loved most—the one who knew your secrets, your voice, your dreams—doesn’t really exist at all? Or what if they existed, but didn’t even know who you are? Kirat Assi was a radio host in West London when a cousin introduced her to a man she had met online. He was a cardiologist. Handsome. Charismatic. Local. Over the course of ten years, they built a life through texts, Skype, and promises. There was love. There was pain. There was even a wedding on the horizon. But when she finally arrived at his doorstep, the man she thought she knew looked her in the eye and said, “I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you before!”
West London, 2009. Kirat Assi led a predictable life—Punjabi family, beloved radio job, modest dreams. She wasn’t chasing romance. Though she admittedly wants to get married in the future.
Her days were simple: work, family dinners, and quiet evenings. But her younger cousin Simran had other plans, promising, “There’s this guy you’ll love. He’s brilliant.”
That click—the one that connects two lives forever—happened on Facebook. And it was the last normal thing Kirat would remember.
Bobby’s Facebook profile had it all: a respected cardiologist, a family man, active in charity, and “based near you,” Simran said casually. “We have mutual friends.”
Kirat added him. They started slowly, sending daily messages and engaging in friend banter. “I’m with someone,” she wrote early on. Bobby agreed: “Same here. Let’s just talk.” It felt safe.
But from the first hello, something about Bobby felt different. And something about Simran’s certainty began to shift Kirat’s boundaries.
After a few months of talking online, in 2011, Kirat spotted him at a London bachelorette party. Tall, still. The man from the profile picture. “Bobby!” she called, swaying from champagne.
He nodded, barely. “Sup?” he muttered over the pounding bass. Surprisingly, he didn’t hug her. Bobby only showed a casual smile as if he hadn’t expected, not even known her.
The next day, Kirat wrote to him, “I think I saw you last night.” Bobby replied with three words: “You looked beautiful.”
Their friendship continued for years until 2013, when devastating news changed Kirat’s life. Simran posted on Facebook: “Please pray for Bobby. He’s been shot.”
Kirat stared at the screen. It felt like fiction, but why would Simran lie? Sanj, the woman Bobby got married to, later confirmed the news. Bobby had allegedly gone to Kenya to visit family.
“He’s in critical condition,” Simran said when Kirat called. “No one knows if he’ll survive.” Kirat couldn’t sleep. Her mind screamed Why am I crying? over a man she barely knew. But her heart already knew the answer.
Days later, Simran called again. “He’s alive. But everything’s changed. He’s under witness protection now. They moved him to the U.S. for safety.”
It was too bizarre to question. But Kirat knew that in Kenya, shooting cases were not ordinary, and the fact that Bobby’s family was powerful, this might hold true. Then Kirat’s inbox pinged.
A new account. A message: “Hi Kirat. I missed you.” Against her better judgment, she wrote back: “I’m glad you’re alive, Bobby.”
After weeks of silence, Kirat’s inbox constantly lit up this time. She’s talking to her friend at last. “Hi Kirat,” he typed. “I’ve missed you. It’s been hard here.”
Bobby claimed he was recovering at a hospital in New York. His tone had changed—fragile, haunted. “I’m only allowed to speak to people I trust. You’re one of them.”
She hesitated, then replied: “Are you really okay?” He wrote back slowly: “Still hurting. But I’m breathing.” That was enough to pull her back in.
In early 2010, Kirat ended her eighteen-year relationship. The weight of it crushed her—family pressure (because they want her to be married), cultural shame, and silence from her ex left her emotionally raw.
Bobby’s messages arrived at strange hours. “You’re stronger than you think,” he told her. “You deserve someone who really sees you. And I do.”
His words steadied her. “My parents are disappointed,” she admitted. “But maybe this happened for a reason.” For once, Bobby didn’t disappear—he stayed and typed.
Soon, Kirat met Rajvir, part of Bobby’s medical support team, and Yashvir, his cousin. “We’re the Three Amigos,” Kirat joked. Their group messages lifted the weight of worry and added routine.
One night, Rajvir sent a photo. Bobby lay in bed, tubes at his nose, pale. “He’s fighting,” Rajvir wrote. “He listens to your voice notes every night.”
The intimacy grew. Bobby didn’t just lean on Kirat. His doctors, his cousins, his life—she had become part of it all. And she wanted to be.
On February 14, 2015, Valentine’s Day, Bobby sent a typed confession: “I love you.” Kirat froze, staring at the screen. Then she picked up her phone and pressed the record button.
Her voice, quivering: “I love you so much, Bobby. Whatever it is we have—it’s special. I wish things could’ve been different.”
He replied minutes later: “That message… It’s everything to me.” It wasn’t a casual exchange. It was a shift. The relationship, from then on, was real.
Bobby’s stroke had paralyzed part of his body and weakened his voice. “I can’t speak properly,” he wrote. “But I can type. That’s how I’ll talk to you.”
Kirat adapted quickly. Each morning, she sent voice notes. “Good morning, sweets,” she’d whisper. “Hope you’re okay. I miss you.” He typed back in return.
They never touched, never held hands, never kissed. But each day felt more connected than the last. What they built was invisible, but slowly, it entirely consumed Kirat.
Later on, Bobby proposed using a Facebook drawing tool. He sketched a ring. “I want to spend my life with you,” he wrote. “Will you marry me?”
Kirat gasped. She’d never seen anything like it. It’s in fact her dream. “Yes,” she typed. “Yes, Bobby.” She told Rajvir and Yashvir. Both sent celebratory emojis. Everyone seemed happy, especially Bobby.
He followed up with venue images and ring ideas. “Do you like this one?” he asked. They shared links. Talked about wedding colors. Kirat allowed herself to dream again.
Bobby had one request: don’t tell Father. “I want to ask your dad personally,” he said. “I want to see him face to face.” Kirat respected the sentiment.
She imagined the scene—Bobby meeting her parents, shaking hands, explaining everything. “He’s traditional,” she thought. “Maybe even noble.” It made her love him more.
However, each time a visit was planned, something would block it. Bobby’s reasons changed—health complications, witness relocation. The proposal stood still, suspended in unfulfilled promises.
Soon after the proposal, Bobby added Kirat to a Facebook group of his relatives, which consisted of nearly thirty people. Cousins, sisters, in-laws. “They’re excited to meet you,” he typed.
She was welcomed warmly. Kiran, one cousin, messaged often. “He’s so lucky to have you,” she wrote. The group buzzed with emojis and encouragement.
Even Roshni, Kirat’s real cousin, started messaging Bobby directly. “He gives great advice,” she said. Kirat smiled—unaware every message was authored by the same hand.
In mid-2011, they started Skyping. Bobby insisted on audio only. “I can’t show my face,” he said. “Witness protection rules. It’s too risky. Please understand.”
His voice was raspy, barely audible. “It’s the stroke,” he explained. “Speech therapy is helping, but it still hurts.” Kirat nodded, even when he couldn’t see.
She spoke freely while he whispered in return. His invisibility made him feel fragile. It added gravity to everything he said—and removed her need to question him.
As the months passed, Bobby grew controlling. “Send a selfie before you leave work,” he’d demand. “Leave Facebook open during your shift. I just need to know you’re safe.”
Once, her mother made a passing comment: “Why does he always whisper like that?” Kirat snapped. “Don’t talk about him like that!” She felt instantly guilty.
Looking back, she realized something had shifted. He wasn’t just checking in—he was monitoring her life. She’d handed him that power, piece by piece.
In late 2012, Bobby delivered a gut-punch. “I need to tell you something,” he wrote. “Sanj is pregnant. It happened before I met you, I swear.”
How come Sanj was pregnant when Bobby’s been hiding in the U.S.? Things just didn’t make sense for her. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” she asked. He responded: “I was scared. But I’m not leaving you. Please believe that.”
She turned to Simran for clarity. “He loves you,” Simran said gently. “Trust him.” Kirat didn’t want to, but she also couldn’t let go.
Kirat messaged Bobby, asking him to go back to Sanj. “You should do the right thing for your baby,” she wrote. He refused. “I am choosing you.”
He sent another message that night. “I don’t want her. You’re my future. You’re who I want.” Kirat sat quietly, absorbing the words. Their conversations softened again. The decision was made.
“We’ll make this work,” she whispered into a voice note. “We have to.” And just like that, they tried. They even chose baby clothes together online and Bobby would send photos of his baby wearing them. Could it be a new beginning?
In 2013, Simran flew to New York for work. While there, she met Bobby for the first time. He handed her a folded shirt in a plastic bag.
“Give this to her,” he told Simran. “It still smells like my aftershave.” Simran later laughed, “He said he sprayed it for you.”
Kirat held it tightly. She pressed her nose into the fabric. “It smells like him,” she whispered. Something about it felt sacred—even if unseen.
Each morning began the same: a selfie, a “Good morning, sweets” voice note, and a check-in from Bobby. “Are you home? Are you alone?” he always asked.
Kirat couldn’t log off. Her bathroom breaks, lunch hours, even work calls—Bobby needed access. “Keep Facebook open,” he said. “I worry when you’re not online.”
She never questioned the exhaustion. “This is love,” she told herself. Love meant compromise. Love meant being available. Even when it was slowly destroying her.
By late 2014, Kirat started spiraling. One evening, she messaged Bobby mid-panic, overwhelmed by his behavior. “I can’t breathe.” His response chilled her. “I’m fed up with it. You piss me off.”
She sobbed on a video call. Her voice broke apart. Bobby stayed silent. Then messaged her: “The shit you make up—it’s always about you.” She felt ashamed.
Roshni, Kirat’s cousin, noticed the change. “She’s losing weight. She looked like death,” she later recalled. Kirat had become a shadow—pale, anxious, apologizing for her existence.
By 2015, Bobby had taken over Kirat’s entire routine. He was always on a call, monitoring, questioning. “I heard a man’s voice,” he once said during her radio show.
Rajvir brushed it off: “He’s just sensitive. You know how strokes mess with emotions.” But Kirat had already begun editing her own personality to keep peace.
Eventually, she gave up the show. “I can’t do both,” she texted Simran. Bobby kept showering her gifts, as if those could fix everything she’d lost.
When Bobby’s witness protection ended in 2016, he made a new promise. “Now I can come to the UK,” he said. “No more hiding.”
Kirat lit up. “I’ll finally see you.” Just when things are finally aligning, Kirat’s grandmother was dying. Despite that, Kirat prioritized late-night calls, scrolling with fatigue while sitting by her bedside.
When her grandmother passed, Bobby didn’t come. He texted: “I wanted to. I swear.” Kirat stared at the screen, hands shaking, trying to believe him again. Is it going to be the last time?
Before she passed, Kirat’s grandmother looked up and whispered, “I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you to get married.” It shattered her. The promise had been everything.
At the funeral, Bobby stayed silent. She called him, sobbing. “You lied again. You promised. You have to come. Now!” His reply was strangely calm: “I’ll be there tomorrow. I’ve booked everything.”
She didn’t believe him, but part of her wanted to. That night, she opened his flight tracker and watched a plane depart New York.
Kirat tracked the flight obsessively. Bobby said he was staying in Kensington, near a hospital. “I’m just resting,” he texted. “Don’t surprise me.”
Days passed. No messages. No visit. She called the hotel directly. “Is Bobby Jandu staying there?” Receptionist: “We have no one by that name.”
Simran tried to soothe her. “Maybe he used another name. Maybe it’s a mix-up.” But Kirat’s heart whispered something harsher. He’s not there. He never was.
Bobby said he had moved to another place and given Kirat his new address, which is still in the South Kensington area. She called him while circling the street. “I don’t see your flat,” she said. “Where are you?”
Bobby didn’t flinch. “I can actually see you from here,” he said. “But I don’t want to see you.” Kirat froze behind the wheel, stunned.
The phone went quiet. Kirat lowered it from her ear. Outside, the street stood empty. Whatever spell he’d cast—it had finally started to crack.
Still shaken from Kensington, Kirat thought maybe Bobby was hiding at Sanj’s—the woman Bobby once claimed had his child. She started googling her and luckily found her number.
She dialed Sanj. A familiar voice answered. Calm. Almost too calm. “Hello? Bobby, is this you?” Kirat’s throat tightened. There was a pause—just long enough to make her heart race.
Kirat hung up. Her head swirled. That voice—casual, certain. Was Sanj expecting him? Was he with her now? Something deep inside Kirat snapped.
Kirat decided to hire private investigators in London. She sent Bobby’s information and wanted his address. Within 24 hours, the investigator came back with an address
She was absolutely shocked when she discovered Bobby was just living near her. As a matter of fact, only an hour away from her home.
She got in her car and drove. The house was located. The door opened. A man stepped out with familiar eyes. She stared, breathless. “Hi, Bobby. I’m Kirat,” she said softly. He looked completely lost.
Sanj appeared behind him, holding their son. “Who is she?” she asked. Bobby stammered, “I—I don’t know.” Kirat’s stomach turned. Ten years vanished in a blink.
“I’ve been speaking to you every day for years,” Kirat said. “You proposed to me. We planned a wedding. I know your son’s name. I know Sanj.”
Bobby was pale. “You must have me confused with my younger brother, JJ. People mix us up all the time.” He tried to deflect, to dissolve it. Kirat showed him his own photos. “I’m talking to Bobby Jandu. Not JJ!”
As tension thickened between her and Bobby, Kirat’s phone rang. Why was Bobby calling her if he’s talking to Bobby right now? She showed Bobby the phone.
“It’s my face—but that’s not my phone number.” Bobby knew right away someone was pretending to be him. Kirat’s chest tightened. Her own delusion shattered.
She called Simran in a panic. “He says it’s not him!” Simran, calm as ever, replied: “You need to leave.” Kirat’s head spun. She wasn’t ready for the answer waiting behind that voice.
Sanj locked the door. Kirat knocked again. “I saw you last week,” she called out. “You walked right past me in London. You had your son.”
“I brought presents,” Kirat said. “I always felt like he was my stepson.” Sanj was rattled. “Have you been watching us?” she asked, backing away.
At home, Kirat collapsed. Her phone buzzed again—“You shouldn’t have seen that,” read the message. It came from the same Bobby who’d just denied her existence.
Back home, Kirat texted Simran. “I’m going to the police,” she said, shaking. Simran paused, then asked to come over. But when she arrived, she stayed outside.
Kirat opened the door. “Why won’t you come in?” Simran looked down. “I don’t think I should.” Kirat pressed. “Why not?” Simran finally looked up and confessed.
“It was all me,” she said. “I was Bobby. Every message. Every call. Everything you thought was real—I made it up.” Kirat felt the world collapse.
Kirat gasped. “Rajvir? Yashvir? The cousin? The doctor?” Simran nodded. “They were all me.” A decade of characters—sixty profiles—each played by the same person.
Kirat’s voice cracked. “Who have I been sleeping with on the phone?” Simran didn’t flinch. “Me,” she said. Coldly. Not even guilty.
The illusion hadn’t just been digital—it had been intimate. Private voice notes. Wedding plans. Love confessions. All of it orchestrated like a performance with one cast member.
Simran later messaged the real Bobby and confessed. He was stunned. “Why would she do this?” he told police. “That’s her cousin. She’s a girl. This is sick.”
Simran begged Kirat not to go to the authorities. But Kirat was terrified. “They’re saying I harassed them. That I followed them. That I made it all up.”
She was being gaslit even after discovering the truth. “I never consented to any of this,” she told Simran. “I was in love with Bobby, not you.”
Kirat reported everything to the Brighton police. She explained the false identities, the coercive messages, and the years of deception. But officers saw something different.
They said Bobby and Sanj were the victims. “You showed up at their house. You’ve been watching them,” an officer told her, overlooking the digital manipulation.
Kirat begged them to understand. “I was emotionally intimate with someone who doesn’t exist. I was lied to. Groomed. Controlled.” But no criminal investigation was opened.
Kirat took justice into her own hands. She downloaded every voice note, screenshot, and text. She archived all sixty profiles before Simran could erase the evidence.
One by one, the accounts started vanishing. Rajvir. Yashvir. Bobby’s sisters. Bobby’s cousins. Gone. But Kirat had already saved everything—thousands of messages across ten years.
“I wanted to disappear,” she later said. “But instead, I collected the truth.” If no one else would document her pain, she would.
Kiran, a cousin and former confidante, looked back through Bobby’s real Facebook. Something clicked—those baby outfits Kirat once picked? They already existed in old photos.
Simran had reverse-engineered the lie. She manipulated Kirat into choosing clothing Bobby’s son had already worn, then pretended it was a coincidence.
Every tender moment, even the most trivial decision, had been staged. Simran wasn’t improvising. She was designing emotional traps years in advance.
Kiran remembered the details. Simran seemed very busy on her smartwatch every time they met. She was responding as Bobby, Yashvir, Rajvir, Kiran, and many more.
She did all of those while talking to her. Face to face. The notifications seemed random. Something that would never come from one person alone.
Kirat realized the horror: Simran had sat across from her, smiling, listening to love notes she sent to a man that didn’t exist. The predator was always in the room.
After confessing, Simran went silent. She cut contact, deleted accounts, and vanished from every digital corner. Not another message came—no explanation, no confrontation, nothing.
The profiles disintegrated. Bobby’s family, Rajvir, all the cousins—erased like a vanishing cast after the final act. But Kirat had already backed everything up.
She stared at folders filled with love letters, fake diagnoses, and wedding plans. “She walked away,” Kirat said later, “but I had to keep living with it.”
In 2020, Kirat filed a civil case against Simran. There would be no criminal trial. But this was her stand—for truth, for harm acknowledged, for survival honored.
She wanted the system to understand what coercive control looked like digitally. She brought evidence. Screenshots. Logs. Photos. Messages. A digital trail of entrapment.
They settled out of court. Simran paid compensation. But for Kirat, it wasn’t about money. It was about the public record. “I needed the truth to be known. I want to stop victim shaming.”
In 2021, Simran sent a letter. Controlled. Emotionless. It acknowledged “distress” but never explained why. There were no details—just legal phrasing, ending with her name.
Kirat didn’t respond. “She robbed me of ten years, then handed me one page,” she later told a journalist. “It didn’t even feel like it was written for me.”
The letter sits in a drawer today. Folded. Untouched. The weight of it isn’t what’s inside—it’s everything it doesn’t say.
Simran never explained why. Not to Kirat. Not to police. Not to anyone. Years passed, but no explanation ever surfaced to justify what she had done.
Friends speculated—jealousy, obsession, mental illness. But none of it made sense. Kirat said, “If I had a reason, maybe I could put it down. But I don’t.”
Silence haunted her more than the lie itself because the lie had shape. The silence? That was a blank page she’d never be able to write on.
What happened wasn’t online drama. It was a decade-long pattern of emotional control, sustained deception, and psychological entrapment by someone inside her own family.
Kirat lost more than time. She lost her job, her health, and her identity. “I stopped trusting my own reactions,” she later said. “I questioned my memories.”
Bobby never existed—but the grief was real. The anxiety was real. The isolation, the loss, the healing—that part was hers to carry alone.
In 2021, Kirat started speaking out. She told her story on the BBC podcast Sweet Bobby and in interviews across the UK. Listeners were stunned.
Her voice—measured, warm, clear—cut through the disbelief. She didn’t dramatize. She didn’t exaggerate. She just told it exactly how it happened.
By naming it, she took its power away. “I don’t want sympathy,” she said. “I want awareness. If it could happen to me, it can happen to anyone.”
For ten years, Kirat was the girlfriend, fiancée, and future bride of a man who never existed. But she was never foolish—she was expertly manipulated.
Simran didn’t just lie—she built a world. A network of fake voices, crises, family dramas, and trauma. Kirat was pulled in deeper each year.
But she survived it. And that survival is no small thing. She walks today with clarity, strength, and a story that changed the way digital abuse is understood.
There are questions that may never be answered. Why Kirat? Why ten years? What was the end goal—love, power, attention? Even Simran’s own family doesn’t know.
But Kirat no longer waits for closure. She built her own. Through therapy, through advocacy, through telling the story again and again until it belongs to her.
Now, she’s 44. Kirat still wondered, “Would I ever get married? Will I get to be a mom? Despite the answers, I’m taking over my future. No one’s taking it from me. Ever again.”
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