On the trail of India's private investigators
Updated on 22 January 2010
India's economic transformation has produced a growing army of private investigators, snooping on affairs and reputations. Krishnan Guru-Murthy reports.
After 50 years on the trail of adulterers, swindlers and cheats, Ramesh Madan is the godfather of India’s private investigators.
But when you first meet him, it is hard to tell if he really is the Poirot of Patna or more Clouseau of Calcutta.
Ramesh is the real deal, however. Last month he was honoured by the Indian President – and he employs 300 detectives and support staff across India.
Some of the social changes wrought by India’s economic transformation were perhaps not anticipated. Young men – and, crucially, women – now have money, independence, and are immersed in western influences, with the time and opportunity to get up to all the things their parents, wives and husbands dread.
Instrusive surveillance
If all is fair in love and war, so too in how it is investigated. Hot on the heels of a scandal, the team at Striking Vision Intelligence have been hired by a suspicious father to check out a prospective son-in-law.
Their surveillance is intrusive. They secretly film the target in his car and his home – until they make a striking discovery about his drinking habits.
And being a drunkard is about as morally repugnant as being already married for most Indian parents.
In the old days this kind of intelligence would have been picked up by the matchmakers and family networks. But in 2010 India’s family structures are becoming more and more like those in the west.
Protecting the brand
And you can find another breed of “PI”, usually ex-military, working on a new mushrooming business: protecting international brand names.
At the offices of Tact, they are working for all the major mobile phone companies, trying to get illegal handsets with cloned IDs off the streets.
Teams of undercover detectives head into the main electronics area of central Delhi at Karol Bagh.
Phones, usually from China, with cloned ID codes are often bought by the poor. But they are also used by criminal gangs and terrorists because they cannot be traced.
Exposing the “wrongdoers”, as Ramesh Madan, calls them, can be a dangerous game.
He has had several attempts on his life. But he is undeterred. If anything, the continued economic and social revolution is good business.
As long as middle India’s morality stays out of step with its behaviour, 2010 should be another bumper year for the Indian PIs.
