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DAVID MARK: It's often said that a good marriage is based on trust, but in India sometimes that isn't quite enough.
The private detective industry is booming in India, as more and more couples and families hire spies to look into a prospective spouse's past.
As Stephanie March reports from New Delhi, sometimes the results can surprise even the most seasoned detective.
(The Pink Panther theme music)
STEPHANIE MARCH: There are more than 10,000 private detective agencies operating in India and there is no shortage of work.
Companies pay big bucks for background checks into employees, and politicians pay for investigators to dig up information about their political rivals.
But most Indian detectives make their money from couples.
Kunwar Vikram Singh is the president of the Private Detectives Association of India.
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: The traits and habits are also very important not of the boy and girl but also of their families, because when a girl in India gets married he goes to the family. She has to deal with his mother-in-law or sister-in-law, and everybody that use, 10-20 people in the family.
Then the financial status is very important and then the social status of the family is given highest importance. So these are the areas we cover in a matrimonial investigations.
STEPHANIE MARCH: And without giving away your trade secrets, how do you go about gathering that kind of information. As you said, it is quite difficult to find out very personal information about people?
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: We have developed a wonderful models how to gain information from the neighbours. They tell you, this family they are the fighter of cocks or they are not very social or they fight for small little things like parking space and all that.
In India people are, they know each other very well. But it depends how you gain info or how you penetrate into the closer circle of the families, get information from the maid servants, from drivers, from the vegetable vendors.
STEPHANIE MARCH: The results of these investigations can have profound impacts
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: And many a times, you know, when we advise we find the person is not good, then we advise the family not to go for matrimonial alliances, so we give them a kind of counselling also. We say don't do it, she may come and spoil the whole things.
STEPHANIE MARCH: Mr Singh has done hundreds of matrimonial investigations during his 30 year career, and he's had some surprising results. One of the most shocking cases involving a client who came to him with a complaint about his daughter-in-law.
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: Because her husband was away to America, in her absence her father-in-law said this girl is involved in all those shady activities and maybe she's to prostitution. He wanted me to find out complete information, but in the process we found out the girl is very nice.
STEPHANIE MARCH: During the investigation Mr Singh discovered that his client had coerced the local street vendors to say they'd seen the girl going into the park with strange men, and that was when he realized something wasn't right.
He suspected his client had been abusing his daughter-in-law, and was trying to fabricate a story to discredit her before her husband returned from America.
It turned out he was right.
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: And ultimately one of our operators investigations, a good looking girl, we put her with this client and he started behaving in the similar manner with this young girl, who was younger than the age of her daughter, and then we realized oh that, he is a sexy old man.
Then we gather all the information and confronted him that you are trying to implicate your own good daughter-in-law and because we took all of our photographic evidence and we showed that you are a bad man yourself.
So this is a reverse investigation we carry out on our own client to save the life of the girl.
STEPHANIE MARCH: Saving a young woman from an abusive father-in-law might seem like something out of a Hollywood script, but Mr Singh insists that being a real life detective is actually a whole lot harder than what you see in the movies.
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: Films are films, but here your client want correct information which may be needed as litigation support in the court of law, you have to have a complete information backed by conclusive evidence, so this is a thousand times tougher than what James Bond being doing in the movies.
STEPHANIE MARCH: This is Stephanie March in New Delhi for Correspondents Report.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-15/indias-private-detective-industry-booming/5262850
It's often said that a good marriage is based on trust, but in India sometimes that isn't quite enough. The private detective industry is booming in India, as more and more couples and families hire spies to look into a prospective spouse's past.
Source: Correspondents Report | Duration: 4min 36sec
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, india
The private detective industry is booming in India, as more and more couples and families hire spies to look into a prospective spouse's past.
As Stephanie March reports from New Delhi, sometimes the results can surprise even the most seasoned detective.
(The Pink Panther theme music)
STEPHANIE MARCH: There are more than 10,000 private detective agencies operating in India and there is no shortage of work.
Companies pay big bucks for background checks into employees, and politicians pay for investigators to dig up information about their political rivals.
But most Indian detectives make their money from couples.
Kunwar Vikram Singh is the president of the Private Detectives Association of India.
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: The traits and habits are also very important not of the boy and girl but also of their families, because when a girl in India gets married he goes to the family. She has to deal with his mother-in-law or sister-in-law, and everybody that use, 10-20 people in the family.
Then the financial status is very important and then the social status of the family is given highest importance. So these are the areas we cover in a matrimonial investigations.
STEPHANIE MARCH: And without giving away your trade secrets, how do you go about gathering that kind of information. As you said, it is quite difficult to find out very personal information about people?
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: We have developed a wonderful models how to gain information from the neighbours. They tell you, this family they are the fighter of cocks or they are not very social or they fight for small little things like parking space and all that.
In India people are, they know each other very well. But it depends how you gain info or how you penetrate into the closer circle of the families, get information from the maid servants, from drivers, from the vegetable vendors.
STEPHANIE MARCH: The results of these investigations can have profound impacts
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: And many a times, you know, when we advise we find the person is not good, then we advise the family not to go for matrimonial alliances, so we give them a kind of counselling also. We say don't do it, she may come and spoil the whole things.
STEPHANIE MARCH: Mr Singh has done hundreds of matrimonial investigations during his 30 year career, and he's had some surprising results. One of the most shocking cases involving a client who came to him with a complaint about his daughter-in-law.
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: Because her husband was away to America, in her absence her father-in-law said this girl is involved in all those shady activities and maybe she's to prostitution. He wanted me to find out complete information, but in the process we found out the girl is very nice.
STEPHANIE MARCH: During the investigation Mr Singh discovered that his client had coerced the local street vendors to say they'd seen the girl going into the park with strange men, and that was when he realized something wasn't right.
He suspected his client had been abusing his daughter-in-law, and was trying to fabricate a story to discredit her before her husband returned from America.
It turned out he was right.
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: And ultimately one of our operators investigations, a good looking girl, we put her with this client and he started behaving in the similar manner with this young girl, who was younger than the age of her daughter, and then we realized oh that, he is a sexy old man.
Then we gather all the information and confronted him that you are trying to implicate your own good daughter-in-law and because we took all of our photographic evidence and we showed that you are a bad man yourself.
So this is a reverse investigation we carry out on our own client to save the life of the girl.
STEPHANIE MARCH: Saving a young woman from an abusive father-in-law might seem like something out of a Hollywood script, but Mr Singh insists that being a real life detective is actually a whole lot harder than what you see in the movies.
KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH: Films are films, but here your client want correct information which may be needed as litigation support in the court of law, you have to have a complete information backed by conclusive evidence, so this is a thousand times tougher than what James Bond being doing in the movies.
STEPHANIE MARCH: This is Stephanie March in New Delhi for Correspondents Report.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-15/indias-private-detective-industry-booming/5262850
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