Private affairs
An increasing demand for detective services points to a growing need to regulate the unorganised and unlicensed world of sleuths, writes Nikita Puri
It’ s 10.45 pm and Raj a ni Pan di th as just wrapped up work and returned to her Mumbai residence. Clad in her usual cotton sal war-k ameez, she sells the image of an innocuous Ma ha rash tr ian ma us hi( maternal aunt) with ease. Warm and affable, she looks like someone you’ d easily spill your secrets to.
It’ s not out of the ordinary for Pan ditto keep irregular hours. It’ s also not unusual for the 56-year-old to pretend to be someone she isn’ t .“I’ ve pretended to be visually challenged, or speech-and hearing-impaired. I’ ve also spent days impersonating a beggar ,” she says.
Pan di tis part of a thriving world of detectives— unlicensed, unorganised, often operating outside the law, and yet enjoying an informal legitimacy. It’s difficult to fathom the range, reach and strength of this world. Numbers are hard to come by. The Delhi-headquartered Association of Private Detective sand Investigators, which is recognised by the government of India as a representative body of private investigators in the country, has about 600 members, among whom are retired army personnel and former police men. Unverified accounts put the number many times higher. According to a report in The Guardian, there are about 3,500 detective agencies in Delhi alone.
There was a time when investigating family affairs was this industry’ s bread and butter: collecting data on cheating spouses, conducting pre-marriage verification sand even helping paranoid parents keep tabs on their teenage children. But the nature of the beast is rapidly changing.
The industry now finds sustained patronage from corporate houses to carry out pre-employment checks, authenticate the financial standing of a prospective partner and also look into thefts in the business and “antimanagement activities” such as unrest against the management.
It is not unusual for banks, too, to turn to private sleuths. Earlier this year, on April 25, the Punjab National Bank invited applications from detective agencies through a public notice with the aim to “significantly supplement efforts of the field officials in recovering bank due sin non-performing assets”. Tracing the whereabouts of an absconding borrower and his guarantors would fetch the agency ~30,000, read the advertisement posted on the bank’s website. And, if it succeeded in locating the properties of the default er, other than those mentioned in the bank’ s records, then the agency could bag up to ~150,000. Applicants were required to have at least three years of experience and to be a member of the Association of Private Detectives and Investigators.
Private detective agencies have now become “risk consulting firms” to ensure one has “correct information” before making any kind of deal, personal or professional, says Kunwar Vikram Singh, chairman of Delhi-based firm, Lancers Network. Singh is also the chairman of the Association of Private Detectives and Investigators.
There’ s a certain amount of drama to the profession. Sample these tag lines: “We can see the unseen ”;“I can plant my detective in your guest bedroom .” One agency has even ensured that all its phone numbers end in “007”, the code for the fiction al British secret service agent, James Bond. A documentary made on Pandit, who is widely accepted as India’ s first female detective, is even titled Lady James Bond.
Detectives didn’ t always enjoy such acceptability. When Secunder a bad-based DKG iri, a former army officer trained in intelligence gathering, started his agency, Sharp Detectives, in1978, he was forced to offer security services alongside .“Lending out security guards was my primary source of bread and butter. I did it just to be a detective .” Many of the larger agencies still provide security and surveillance for residential as well as office buildings, alongside investigative services.
Giri has come along way from those early days. One of his clients today is the Pu ne-based Kirloskar Group. A few years ago, the company real is ed that a rival firm always seemed to be one step ahead of them. They’ d launch products similar to theirs, but often at a cheaper price. A little digging proved that some of the company’ s employees were selling its research to the rival outfit.
Like Giri, Pandit was determined to be a detective. The daughter of a police man who worked with Mumbai’s crime branch, she was in college when she solved her first case. A class mate’ s frequent absence sand suspicious behaviour led Pan ditto follow her. “This was 1986,” she recalls. It turned out that her class mate was offering sexual favours for money.
When P and it first proposed the idea of becoming a detective, everyone, including her father, told her that a woman couldn’ t do this work .“‘ What, you want to be a spy?’ they’d ask me.” P and it formally started her her own agency, Raj a ni Investigation Bureau, in1991. In the years to come, Pandit, who lives with her mother and two brothers, would go onto become the subject of films and countless news stories.
For Delhi-based Bhavna Paliwal, becoming a detective wasn’ t the plan. She was working with a newspaper when she chanced upon an ad from a detective agency looking to hire a woman .“They felt it would make their women clients more comfortable. Later, I started working on cases too,” she says. Now in he rearly 40s, Paliwal runs the Tej as Detective Agency.
The cases these sleuths deal with are varied. An animal rights activist once approached G ir ito investigate where the don keys of And hr a Pradesh were disappearing .“There is high demand for donkey meat, especially in Gunt ur. Don keys were even being brought in from neighbourings tates,” Giri says .“The leather was being exported to China .”
P and it once spent days as a domestic help in a woman’ s house .“Her extended family believed she had killed her husband and was having an extra marital affair ,” says Pandit. They were right. When Pandit real is ed the woman’ s accomplice was going to fleet he city, she dropped a kitchen knife on her foot to buy time for the police to arrive.
The distraction, as her foot started bleeding profusely, worked. The woman wasarrested.
Notallcases, however, require improvisations with kitchen knives oncue, but all of them require surveillance. This places the work of private investigators in a grey area, says Delhi based She rb ir Pan ag, partner at Law Offices of Panag & Babu.
When the police carry out surveillance, they have to follow a process that includes filing a First Information Report, which may lead to a charge sheet being filed. But when a private investigator conducts surveillance, there’ s potential abuse of the process in the absence of regulated safeguards .“This raises significant concerns about the right to privacy and potential misuse of personal data ,” says Panag. “Thisdata, afterall, is not being collected as part of al awful process .”
Panag recalls a case when a private investigator tried to obtain information using the Right to Information Act. When denied, he attempted to obtain the records illegally. This sleuth would also continuously show up at the workplace of the person he was supposed to “shadow”. His “target” filed a case citing a threat to his life.
Most private detective stake on cases that are outside the domain of police scrutiny, like corporate and matrimonial espionage, says Praveen Sood, director general of police, Crime Investigation Department, Karnataka. They might get unofficial referrals, says Sood, but “more often than not, they end up employing illegal means to obtain information, so we don’ t work with them ”.
But there are those who do. Every week, Giri gets about three to four cases as referral from the police. These are largely cases where someone wants proof of a spouse cheating. Bengaluru-based-Puneet Kumar, one of the directors of Globe Detective Agency, recalls that this is how his father, Prem Kumar, also got work for his company in the initial days. Pr em Kumar had setup the agency in 1961 on returning to India after studying criminology in Chicago. He walked into the office of Delhi’ s crime branch department and requested access to the files of unsolved cases.
Today, the third generation of the Kumar family is joining the business. They no longer have to go hunting for cases. “We usually have our hands full,” says Puneet Kumar.
The job requires training, at least in intelligence-gathering. Most detectives, however, learn on the job. Others, froma specialist, like Kolkata-based SR Banerjee. Call him on his phone and he responds :“I am SR Banerjee, world famous detective .”
Now in his 80s, Banerjee, aformer police man-turned-detective, offers one on-one coaching for ~15,000 a this Ana pol Detective Agency. Over the course of six months, he trains wanna be detective sin hand writing analysis, civil and criminal laws, understanding body language and use of surveillance equipment.
For those who are able to put the training to good use, the career can be a lucrative one. Some charge ~6,000 to ~8,000 per day for short-term surveillance. Others have a flat fee of between ~30,000 and ~50,000 per case. For corporate clients, the bill can run into a couple of million rupees.
The question of the legality of their work, however, remain sun addressed. Pr ash ant Mali, lawyer with Bombay High Court, says private eyes often commit privacy violations by obtaining call data records .“You can not commit a crime to find a crime.” Earlier this year, about12 detectives were arrested for obtaining call data records. Pan di twas one of them. She spent 40 days in judicial custody.
The Private Detective Agencies (Regulation) Bill of 2007 has long been pending .“Lawmakers have had discussions with us and we are hoping it will come through in the next Parliament session,” says Singh.
As private agencies mushroom, con artists have also entered the business. Kumar recall show a potential client wanted him to sign on background verification forms for 70 people without actually carrying out those checks. This man’ s boss was based in the US, so he though the could fake the records.
Giri was once asked to give a report on how to set up a factory for an aspirin-like drug. The people who approached him wanted specific resource materials from the company they wanted to rival. “That would mean corporate espionage. Our aim is to protect people’s property, like in the Kirloskar case, not help others steal it,” says Giri.
Another detective might not have taken the ethical route. In less complex, plain vanilla cases, people’ s money has simply disappeared, along with the private eye they hired.
The call for regulation and licensing has never been loud er.
‘LAWMAKERS HAVE HAD DISCUSSIONS WITH US AND WE ARE HOPING THE BILL WILL COME THROUGH IN THE NEXT PARLIAMENT SESSION’ KUNWAR VIKRAM SINGH Chairman, Lancers Network, Delhi