Making a case for marriage

Like a lot of young Indian couples, they met on a matrimonial website and, within a matter of weeks, were picking out the wedding invitations, reserving the horse-drawn carriages and having the bride fitted for a pearl-and gold-encrusted sari.

Judging by his online profile, the groom was suitable and eager to be a good spouse: a quiet, stay-at-home kind of person who never drank and worked as a software engineer. Perfect, thought the bride, a shy 27-year-old computer engineer.

Too perfect, according to Bhavna Paliwal, one of India's wedding detectives, who are being hired here in growing numbers to ferret out the truth about prospective mates.
“These days, you need to check the facts.

"And in India, it's the servants who will tell you 100 per cent everything,'' said Paliwal, 32, in her office, located in a rough-and-tumble neighbourhood of New Delhi. “The key is talking up the drivers, the cooks and the housekeepers. They are busybodies and aren't afraid to tell you.''

In the case of the computer engineer, Paliwal found out that the 29-year-old groom-to-be had been less than honest. He had been having an affair with his housemaid. He spent many of his “quiet'' nights straddling barstools around town, drinking heavily.

There were signs he could be prone to violence, having been in an altercation that left him with a knife wound on his stomach. As far as Paliwal was concerned, he was busted. The marriage was called off.

In India, hiring a wedding detective such as Paliwal has become a common prenuptial ritual, as important as the heavy wedding gold and the multi-cuisine ten-course meal served on plates coated in rosebuds.

Private sleuths have been in business in India for several years but today their services are more crucial than ever. As India's middle and upper classes grow, so too do the dowries given to grooms by brides' families. Those dowries, in turn, have boosted the incentive for fraud.

Alliance for money

Prospective grooms frequently breeze in from as far away as the United States, marry, then rush back home with the spoils, leaving behind what have become known as “abandoned brides''. Meanwhile, in India, young couples who meet over the internet are getting away with lies that gossip would once have exposed.

“When people meet over our site, we recommend a private detective to get all the background when you have a potential bride living in, say, Bangalore and a groom living in Hyderabad,'' said Anupam Mittal, founder of Shaadi.com, an internet portal that celebrated its millionth match last year. Shaadi is Hindi for marriage.

“Our country and culture is changing at warp speeds,'' he said. “We are dispersed all over our own country and the world. The private detective has now become just another part of India's vast wedding industrial complex.''

With an estimated 30,000 brides being abandoned every year, usually by husbands living abroad, India's Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs also recommends that families hire private detectives to vet suitors and avoid being conned into giving away dowries, which are officially outlawed but are still common among the wealthy. The ministry estimates that hundreds of thousands of brides are lied to or misled each year.

Pandit Ram Gopal Atrey, the head priest at the Old Hanuman Mandir temple, one of thousands of neighbourhood temples in New Delhi, has seen it happen often.

“We have 50 cases a year of brides being duped. This never was the case in the past,'' Atrey said. “When this happens, it's like an act of terrorism in the life of the girl and her family. They are shamed and left with nothing after the dowry is paid.''

For Paliwal, the worst part of the investigations is breaking the news.

Recently, she had to reveal the truth about the computer engineer. The solidly built detective sat the would-be bride down in the back of her office with a box of tissues. First, she showed her the photographs: the groom partying at nightclubs, hard liquor sloshing in his glass, flirty cocktail waitresses lingering at his table.

Then she showed her the worst of it: the housemaid's tearful videotaped confession that she was having an affair with the groom.

Gaining trust and truth

“Better luck next time'' was Paliwal's hardened way of consoling the shattered young woman.

Paliwal, along with other detectives from her agency, spent days befriending the intended groom's maid and videotaping her with a spy cam. Paliwal was undercover when she chatted up the maid, telling her she wanted to open a business in the area.

“The bride was so upset, but we have saved her from a lifetime of misery,'' Paliwal said as she fielded a call from another prospective client. “You don't want to wait till marriage to know the real picture.''

The bride-to-be, who was so humiliated she didn't want to be named, said she was devastated and entered therapy. “But without their investigations, I would be dealing with these truths in my daily life,'' she said.

The investigation involved a team of four female detectives, led by Paliwal. Since it was a rush job and included the use of high-tech recording equipment, Paliwal's agency charged about $1,200.

But the bride's brother, Prem Sharma, said what the agency found out was worth every rupee. “We would have been lost without our lady detective. This was not the right boy for my sister,'' he said.