Marriage, lies and videotape

Even as lovers exchange rings and vows of everlasting love, as families and friends come together to bless ‘holy’ unions, as wedding bells toll and love and happiness linger in the air, the phones are ringing — in the offices of wedding detectives.

And the phones just haven’t stopped ringing this wedding season. D Kumar, proprietor of Secret Eye, whose caller tune starts with a “Hello Mr Bond” and continues with the famous James Bond soundtrack, says, “This is the peak time for pre-matrimonial investigations. I have been getting 15 to 20 cases a month.” When he answers the phone, it is invariably another parent wanting to get a ‘check’ done on a prospective groom or bride. Kumar has to decline. He is just too busy. 

Mumbai’s private detectives, who are employed in various kinds of work, from post-matrimonial investigations to check the fidelity of spouses, to investigating the credentials of people being employed in large multi-national corporations (MNCs), have been focusing primarily on pre-matrimonial cases these past two months.  They are enjoying a boom, as worried parents deal with matches made not by matchmakers, but in coffee shops, colleges, offices, and over the Internet. Unsure of the backgrounds of their prospective sons and daughters-in-law, private detectives are being hired for sums ranging from Rs25, 000 to Rs35, 000.   

Tall claims
“People lie about their financial status, their health, their past, and what not,” says Sunil Joshi, an investigator at DS Detectives in Mumbai. A few months ago, Joshi received a phone call from a girl working in an MNC. In two months, she planned to get married to her colleague, but she was torn with suspicion that he was having an affair with his friend. She had been told that they were ‘just friends’, but her doubts would not go away. For 15 days, Joshi and his team-mates trailed the fiancé; and found nothing wrong in his conduct. But when they got wind of his plans to travel out of town and booking a hotel room, they bribed the hotel’s house-keeping staff and got spy cameras installed in his room. The camera caught footage of the fiancé; having sex with his friend, and the wedding was called off.

Shripal Shah, director, ProbEye, explains how the wedding detectives go about their investigations. “For pre-matrimonial checks, we start with the house: whether the property is owned or rented, if the subject in question is married or has been engaged before. We talk to drivers, neighbours, neighbours’ drivers, maidservants, gardeners, dhobis, etc. We even pose as couriers and call centre professionals to elicit information. There are many ways to find things out,” says Shah.

In a recent case, Shah was approached by a woman from Kolkata. She was getting married to a wealthy businessman from Lokhandwala in Mumbai and wanted a background check on him. The businessman was living in a rented accommodation, and was to get possession of a couple of three BHK houses by 2011. “We did a complete check, even going to those under-construction houses, to find that he was not lying. Information from neighbours and the watchmen in his building was difficult to come by. We even called him up posing as call centre professionals. Everything seemed fine, till we found by chance that he had an ongoing affair with another woman,” says Shah. The information was passed on and the marriage was called off. 

Question of trust
Not everyone is convinced that hiring a private eye to check on a partner is the proper way to set out on a marriage. Clinical psychologist Samindara Sawant says, “A good marriage is built on trust. One can’t start a relationship of a lifetime by distrusting the prospective partner.” She advises young couples to try and get to know each other on their own, instead of rushing to a wedding detective. “And if an investigator has to be hired, then take the other’s permission,” she adds. 

A visit to the websites of many of these detective agencies reinforces the tacky aspect of this growing phenomenon on the Indian marriage mart. You will encounter images of men wearing bowler hats, their faces covered with their overcoats’ upturned collars.

There are also images of scantily-dressed women, either carrying a dagger or looking helpless. One website even has a bullet whizzing continuously on the top half of the homepage. Some of the detectives have cellphone numbers ending with a 007 and some like Kumar, the James Bond caller tune.

Joshi’s caller tune is the song ‘do jasoos kare mehsoos/ ke duniya badi kharab hai/ kaun hai sachcha/ kaun hai jhoota/ har chehare pe naqaab hai’ (Two detectives feel that the world is bad. Who is true, who is false, every face has a mask) from the film Do Jasoos. He explains, “My senior and I saw this film and we found the song very apt for the kind of work we do.”

But there’s nothing funny about the work that these agencies do or the demand for their services. Joshi’s agency employs 28 investigators, 12 of whom are girls. Some of them are ‘followers’, their job being simply to tail a suspect. Then there are ‘senior investigators’ and ‘cyber investigators’.

“Nowadays, because of improvements in technology, everyone from Bhayandar to New York is connected,” says Joshi.

“They meet someone over the Internet for the first time and in a month are preparing to get married. Everyone has a past and you need someone to dig it out for you, before it gets too late.”