It’s normal, say Digital Age detectives who rely on e-footprint to stalk quarry

Curious how prowling has evolved with the advent of smartphones,  DNA spoke to three leading detectives in Mumbai to understand how they nose around these days. 

Sachin Patil, a resident of Mulund, has been working as a professional detective since the past six years. Patil’s job is to spy on married couples who seek his help to find out if the partner is cheating. 

“Trailing couples is a dead manoeuvre.  Spy cameras and bugs are now handy to nail the partner, even in a court of law. Call data records have become a very useful tool to identify the character of the person,” said Patil.

“Couples often leave traces of their online activities, which help us identify their traits. We have got requests from women to check if their better half  is watching gay porn,” he said.

Puneet Waswani, a cyber expert with a firm in Andheri, quit his job for the full-time business of spying. “The clientele is huge . Unlike earlier, when detectives changed their clothes and furtively clicked photos, today we can sit in closed cabins and work online with software to collect proof for our clients.”

“We can retrieve phone data,  which can be submitted in courts, with  hi-tech software,” he said.

Getting CDRs is a “very normal”  thing, said Siddharth Nair, a part-time detective. “Nodal officers of telecom companies make money by sharing CDRs with people like us. Policemen while getting approval from seniors to procure CDRs from telcos, often add extra names they are paid by the client to get information on.”

“CDRs are useful to keep a tab on employees too. Corporates have their own check teams who keep a watch on the employees with these methods”, said Nair.

(*All names changed on request)