Jyoti & Kiran Matharoo dated a slew of Nigerian billionaires, but despite a run-in with international law, The New York Times reports that the sisters continue to flaunt their extravagant lifestyles.
New Delhi: An inextinguishable desire for luxury and decadence, almost perplexing greed, and a whole lot of grit — this is what made the Matharoo sisters date many, many billionaire men.
Canadian divas of Indian origin, Jyoti and Kiran Matharoo have an affinity for all things expensive — shoes, clothes, private jets and lifestyle. Their billionaire Nigerian boyfriends could give them all of this, and social media fame came as a happy byproduct.
Of course, some things even their brilliant minds didn’t see coming: A major run-in with international law, finding their names in the database of Interpol red notices, being referred to as “exotic imports who held high society in a vicious, manipulative chokehold” by the press. But, as reported by The New York Times, these ‘Canadian Kardashians’ have no regrets and continue to flaunt their rather enviable lives on Instagram.
“We spent one night in a cell while they were trying to scare us into confessing something we didn’t do” Jyoti told ThePrint.
How the journey began
Jyoti and Kiran, who today collectively enjoy nearly 80,000 followers on Instagram, are children of middle-class Indians who migrated to Canada. Born and brought up in the city of Toronto, the sisters’ ordinary lives took an extraordinary turn of sorts a decade ago when a recently-graduated Jyoti had a chance encounter with a Nigerian petroleum tycoon.
A romance began brewing, and before the sisters could process it, they were flown down on a private jet to France, Greece and finally, the billionaire’s homeland, Nigeria. Welcomed by a caravan of Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUVs, they were taken to the man’s home — nothing short of a mansion. While Kiran found her solace sitting beside the pool, Jyoti went off with her billionaire boyfriend to Malaysia to spend time with a prince.
The magnanimous boyfriend would shower her with his love, gifts, and a monthly stipend of $10,000. This way, she would never need to find work. But that wasn’t it; he also bought her a fancy condo in Toronto. The arrangement, as perfect as it may seem, wasn’t to last forever. Both Jyoti and Kiran would soon move on to a barrage of other billionaire boyfriends who would satiate all their needs.
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Tryst with social media
A wardrobe exploding with Gucci, Celine, Hermès and more such fancy brands, traversing the roads of Dubai in a Rolls Royce, and many tours across countries in their private jets. You don’t need to know the sisters personally to know that they enjoy a decent lifestyle, to put it mildly. Their Instagram and Flickr accounts are testament to this.
“Whore,” reads a comment on one of Jyoti’s pictures on Instagram. “How are you doing in jail fat a**?,” reads another one right below it.
Moral policing and shaming is a menace no sexually liberated and unapologetic woman is spared from, and definitely not on the internet. The Matharoo sisters weren’t either. But what makes their case exceptional is how it somehow landed them in jail.
A nightmare
All the social media flaunting and the consequent fame came at a cost — an ugly one. A few days after the Matharoo sisters arrived in Lagos, Nigeria in December 2016, loud thuds on their hotel room door came as an ominous warning of the chaos that would soon unravel.
Many men — some police officers in plainclothes — entered their room and began forcing the women, in their bathrobes to come to the police station. Puzzled by what met them, they resisted the accosting, but eventually had to comply.
Once at the police station, the accusations only baffled them more. The police officers kept asking the sisters if they run a gossip blog which is responsible for spreading humiliating rumours about the Nigerian elite. The site was allegedly in Nigerian Pidgin, a language the sisters claim to neither understand nor speak.
From this police station, the sisters say they were taken to Nigeria’s notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad police station, where in a classic thriller-drama style interrogation, a police officer behind a wooden desk demanded them to write a confession conceding it was they who owned the gossip site. Intriguingly, the site in question wasn’t only slandering the “Nigerian elites” but also spread rumours about the sisters themselves, and was among the many which referred to them as prostitutes.
After the back and forth between the officer and the sisters, with neither party agreeing to budge, the sisters were allegedly thrown into jail cell with 12 other women, and plenty of rats. Pieces of foam to sleep on, and a hole in the floor to use as a toilet — the sisters were brought down from their flamboyant lifestyle in the blink of an eye.
The next day, the sisters say, officers brought them back to their hotel room and took away their passports, gadgets and $11,000 from the safe. They were then detained in a hotel room for 18 days.
“We were held illegally in a hotel room by the airport by some hired police officers,” Jyoti told ThePrint.
Amongst the many Nigerian billionaires they were accused of slandering, cyberstalking and even kidnapping, was one of Kiran’s ex-boyfriends, Femi Otedola, chairman of Forte Oil PLC — a man with a net worth of $1.8 billion in 2016.
One fine day, while serving their detention, an associate of Otedola visited them in their cell and showed a ray of hope. If they admitted to their crime and apologised to Otedola on video, they could be let off.
Seeing this was their only chance to return to their life in Canada, the sisters agreed.
Once home, the sisters decided to stay low-key on social media for a while before deciding to speak to the press and divulge details of their detention on their blog. The nightmare seemed to be coming to an end, but soon after going public with their version of truth, things took yet another ugly turn.
Kiran had flown to Italy to buy furniture when Italian customs officers detained her at the airport. She was told there was a flag on her passport from the Interpol. She would spend the next 40 days in Italian jail, before being allowed to fly back to Canada because, incidentally, Nigeria never filed extradition paperwork.
No regrets
Kiran’s return meant that the sisters could resume their lives in Toronto. While gloomy and scared of what awaited them next, the girls didn’t give up on their social media accounts. Kiran developed an online food consulting brand which gained immense traction. Jyoti continued with her photoshoots.
Soon, an American man residing in Dubai approached Jyoti on Instagram with an offer to start a fashion line. A month later, the sisters received mail from Interpol, telling them their names had been cleared from their database. The Matharoos couldn’t have been more relieved.
Jyoti travelled to Dubai to start her project with the businessman, but that deal soon turned into a love affair. Reportedly, it was an orange dress made by Kiran for Jyoti that bedazzled the man, and he told them to rush to Los Angeles and make a career out of their talent.
Somewhere between travelling in their private jets in USA to poolside photoshoots in Beverly Hills, the sisters have managed to set up their own fashion line — SPCTRMstudio.
Many of their followers on Instagram ask them for tips to do what they were able to. “There’s always going to be a guy saying, ‘let me spoil you’, who wants to fly us somewhere,” Jyoti told The New York Times.
“For once, we want to just focus on ourselves.”
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This story has been updated to include comments from Jyoti Matharoo.
The sisters make Pamella Bordes feel like a nun in a convent.