It’s a sunny morning on 11 Short Street, the city office of Globe Detective Agency (P) Ltd. You walk up the rickety wooden staircase with wrought iron railings to a second-floor apartment and knock on a glass door framed with wood. A woman opens it. She’s Preeti Das, commercial executive of Globe, Calcutta, as well as a detective with hands-on field experience. You half expect her to say, “I know who the murderer is,” a la Miss Marple. She doesn’t. Instead, sitting down at her desk, which is buried under a pile of paper, she gets to the point. “The demand for female detective agents is indeed on the rise,” she says.
And the writing is on the wall. On November 15, 2003, an online placement site carried an advertisement on behalf of a UK-based crime investigation agency, announcing as many as 35 vacancies for the post of trainee-detective. It invited applications from India for major Indian cities. What was interesting about the ad was not so much the open invitation for application to such an arcane field of activity, but the fact that the “preferred gender” of all 35 candidates was “female”.
“Sleuths are hired by all sorts of people for all sorts of purposes,” explains Das. Bosses hire them to gather information about prospective employees. Spouses, suspecting infidelity, hire them. Lately, even parents of teenaged or college-going boys and girls have taken to hiring them to keep an eye on their activities. “And in certain situations only a woman can do the job,” she says. Das recalls an incident when a husband had hired Globe to monitor the movements of his wife, whom he suspected of having an affair. “It required that we follow her around at all times, without raising suspicion. She had to be followed into the bathroom too”.
Female detectives are also often planted in organisation as receptionists or telephone operators to investigate corporate frauds. “In such cases our job is to listen in, eavesdrop and tap conversation,” says 32-year-old Anna KC, who operates from Globe’s Calcutta office and has been on such missions a number of times.
In a garment factory in Bangalore recently, the bosses suspected pilferage by staff. They planted a female decoy, who would serve tea and do odd jobs. Her job was to mingle with the staff and discover the ‘thief’ so to speak, and collect proof of his/her crime. Also, in arranged marriages, pre-marital investigations are often conducted by families to gather information about the bride or the groom. “For this we prefer to send our girls because they can make inquiries about the person under cover as salesgirls or market survey officers,” says Das. “It’s easy for women to build up rapport with people in a neighbourhood. A sari saleswoman, for instance, can get into people’s houses and get them talking”.
Others attribute the growing demand to the perception that women have some “inherent feminine qualities” which are extremely useful in such a profession. “The investigator’s job requires patience, the ability to blend into situations, the aptitude for taking people into confidence and keeping a secret,” says Maj. (retd) Sudhir Kumar, CEO, Eagle Detective Agency, Bangalore. “Women make good, if not better undercover agents than their male counterparts, because they are less likely to attract suspicion and more likely to be trusted. They are discreet, good at reading body language and seldom miss out on minute details. They are born with the prerequisites of the job.” He points out that since in this profession intelligence plays a more important role than physical strength, women are very well equipped to deal with the demands of the profession.
But the female detective is not a new concept, points out sociologist Bula Bhadra. “They have been around for long, in real life, as well as in literature and cinema.” But they were there in small numbers. Now more and more women are coming out of the house and entering mainstream professional areas. Husbands are prying into their affairs. Parents want the movement of their daughters to be monitored. When they were indoors there was no need for this. And because a woman shadowing a woman is likely to arouse less suspicion than a man shadowing a woman, more women need to join the forces.
According to Sagar Khetma, director, Flash Services detective agency, Mumbai, “I don’t hire female detectives just because they usually have the innate qualities of patience and prudence, which no doubt are important qualities. But I take them also because these days women are educated and out-going. They can, like their male counterparts, tackle difficult situations. And I prefer those who have general ideas about a wide range of things — from automobiles to government offices.”
In fact Major Shivanagi of A-One Services, Mumbai, attributes the demand to the need to grow in numbers. “With the general increase in crime rate throughout the country,” he says, “there is a growing demand for undercover agents. In proportion to that, there is a growing demand for female detectives.” But are there any takers? Seems so.
“We are regularly flooded with calls from young girls asking questions about how to enter the profession,” says Puneet Kumar, executive director, Globe, Bangalore. A young girl from Calcutta, Joanna MacDonald, a student of class 10, has, in a long-three-page letter, professed her “keen interest in the intelligence service” and implored Pervin Malhotra, career-counsellor and columnist to help her decide what subjects she should take to pursue this.
Whatever the reason, agencies are hiring female detectives left, right and centre. Globe in Calcutta, right now has four full-time women investigators. Since a leading south Indian English daily reported on “South India’s first female detective, A.M.Malathy,” who had joined the field in 1980, Globe, Bangalore boasts of having five women detectives — aged between 23 and 40 — on its rolls.
Das laughs when you point out that she doesn’t look like a female detective. Looking nothing like the stereotype female sleuth perpetrated in detective fiction, comic books and movies, she is clad in a plain cotton printed sari, her oiled, salt and pepper hair tied back in a bun. She’s 42, married and like any middle-class Bengali housewife, she wears sindoor, shakha and pola, and alta on her feet.
The popular notion of the female detective, perpetuated in movies, literature and comic strips, is a beauty with brains. She is sexy and smart. Like Charlie’s Angels. Like Modesty Blaise. Ms Marple, elderly and frumpy, however, is a departure, known more for her sharp wit than sex appeal.
Das insists that they are neither. “The traditional view of women as spies and detectives is their power to seduce a man into revealing information. But seduction plays a very little role actually. We are supposed to merge into the background, not stand out. During training we tell our women investigators to dress simply and not attract any attention. We look for young, energetic and average-looking women for the post. They have to have the ability to fit in, not stand out in any way. Their job is to watch, not be watched.”
Inputs from Anusha Sameer Gill
