Richard Gere and Diane Lane in the film Unfaithful. Gere plays a man who hires a detective to follow his wife, who he suspects is having an extra-marital affair

New Delhi, June 28: Planning to get married? Hitch up with a detective first.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” says a woman who did.

Anamika Agarwal isn’t exaggerating. It saved her from a “bleak future”.

Neneo Chongloi wasn’t as lucky.

One day in March, the 42-year-old Manipuri was abandoned by Surinder Pal Singh, her husband of five years, in Dubai.

Chongloi flew to Delhi and tracked him down to a house in Gurgaon. She was in for a shock. Surinder Pal not only had a wife but also two children.

He refused to even acknowledge Chongloi’s presence in his life.

But Chongloi was luckier than Kaushambi Layak. In May last year, the 24-year-old was murdered in cold blood in a Mumbai hotel by her boyfriend of three years.

Investigations revealed that Manish Takur, a naval officer from Bansdroni, Calcutta, was already married.

It is real-life stories like these that mean brisk business for wedding detectives in the country. As crimes of passion top the graph in India, more and more people are looking towards these sleuths to ensure they have a safe life ahead.

With about 30,000 brides being abandoned every year, usually by husbands living abroad, even rural India is waking up to the existence of wedding detectives who handle nearly 30 cases a month on an average. Many of their clients are from small villages in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Statistics show there has been a 200 per cent increase in the number of such cases since 15 years ago.

“It’s now a matter of survival. Now, more than ever before, people depend on matrimonial advertisements and wedding websites to get hitched, so the relationships are across cities and even continents. Which means the chances of being duped are high,” says Kunwar Vikram Singh, head of the Association of Private Detectives of India and owner Delhi detective agency Lancers Network Ltd, who handles up to 40 cases a month.

“Newspapers are filled with cases where the husband or wife, along with their lover, killed their spouses. It’s foolish to take such risks.”

Singh also says that despite the awareness, the cases they get hardly account for 2 per cent of the marriages that happen through these advertisements.

Delhi-based nurse Seema Mukherjee (name changed) had contacted Debashish Ghosh (name changed), a Calcutta businessman, after seeing his matrimonial ad in a newspaper.

One day, after months of courting and travelling to different parts of the country, Ghosh disappeared. Mukherjee contacted Lancer’s Calcutta office.

The sleuths found out that Ghosh was not only married to an airhostess, but also had two kids.

The probe also revealed that Ghosh, a frequent traveller, had duped many women in cities he visited for work.

The investigations come at a hefty price — anything between Rs 15,000 and Rs 25,000. If they happen post-marriage, the cost goes up by Rs 25,000 as proofs need to be furnished to ensure court proceedings.

The probe involves numerous cellphones, spy cameras and voice recorders as the sleuths spend hours tracking their quarry.

“I had met him through a matrimonial site and we were contemplating marriage. I approached a wedding investigator. He found out that my friend was married,” says Anamika.

According to a survey by a cell for women and children, 38 per cent cases of violence against women are directly related to the suspicious nature of their husbands.

“Background verification before marriage can lessen to some degrees these kinds of crimes. In these times, we play a very important role,” says Pradeep Sharma, co-owner of Delhi’s Tejas Detective Agency which employs five women sleuths.