INDIA'S FEMALE DETECTIVES TRACK DOWN INTERNET CHEATS

However splendid everything appeared about his daughter's prospective husband, something in the pit of her father's stomach told him that something was wrong. The groom-to-be seemed upright and deeply religious – which was important to the Sikh family – but still, there was something amiss.
Eventually, the anxious father turned to the professionals. He called a private detective, Taralika Lahiri, and asked her to look into the young man's background. It was just as well he did. "We took the job and sent our people. To our horror we discovered that the man was living with his wife and two daughters. He was already married," said Ms Lahiri. "He had proposed to the girl at the same time. The young man was looking to get some dowry. He was cheating the father and the daughter in order to get money."
When approached to take on a case – be it by a man or woman wanting information about a prospective partner, or a suspicious spouse or an anxious parent – the routine of Ms Lahiri and other matrimonial specialists is similar. They will spend several weeks obtaining as much information as they can about that person, speak to their friends and discreetly follow them. If someone is found to be cheating or lying, they will use digital cameras and video and audio recorders to make sure theyhave incontrovertible proof. With that information in hand, they will return to the person who hired them and break the bad news. "They often feel sad, but they feel that they have saved [themselves] before marriage," said Ms Lahiri. "In the long term they feel good."
"When people meet over our site, we strongly 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," Shaadi.Com's founder, Anupam Mittal, told The Washington Post. "Our country and culture is changing at warp speeds. We are dispersed all over our own country and all over the world. The private detective has now become just another part of India's vast wedding industrial complex."
Another factor adding to the demand for private detectives is the soaring level of dowries given to the family of the groom by the bride's parents. While technically illegal since 1961, experts say the size of dowries and their acceptance by society has in fact grown. So ingrained is the system, that dowry prices are now almost fixed, depending on a prospective husband's salary and career potential.