I spy, gay grooms!

Detective agencies are being hired to check out if grooms to be have homosexual leanings The Pandits were perturbed. They had just received an anonymous letter that said their daughter Shweta’s would-be husband was gay. The Pandits weren’t sure if the letter writer was concerned, or was merely lying. So they hired a detective agency to unearth the truth.
Chennai’s Detectives was not new to the job. Within 24 hours, Shweta’s fiancé, Anand Narayanan, a Chennai-based software professional, received a call. “We set a trap for Narayanan. A woman called him, sent him intimate text messages and urged him to meet her at a beach bar. Narayanan showed no interest,” says Chennai Detective.
Then the agency launched Plan B. “A male operative was sent to woo Narayanan. This time he responded with great interest,” recalls Rathinaveluj. Investigations revealed that Narayanan was having an affair with a male colleague at work. The Pandits called off the wedding.
Urban India offers a new found anonymity to the young. “Most arranged marriages are fixed through the Internet, where the bride and groom’s families don’t know each other. So commercial agencies are being asked to verify every detail about the spouse,” says Baldev Kumar Puri, chairman, AMX Detective, Delhi.
The probes are not limited to arranged matches. Software professionals Anita Sharma and Vijay Chauhan had been dating for two years before they decided to tie the knot. But Anita’s parents asked AMX Detective to conduct a check on Vijay — his family, finances, sexual leanings and whether he had any major diseases. “We shadowed Vijay for 10 days and found that he was a member of a gay club in Delhi,” says Puri. The marriage was called off.
It’s not just prospective grooms who are put under the scanner. Hyderabad’s Third Eye Intelligence Bureau has been conducting homosexuality checks in post-matrimonial investigations too. “We get a lot of cases where wives doubt their husband’s sexual leanings because they don’t show any interest in them,” says Rajender Khanna, chief investigation advisor, Third Eye Intelligence Bureau.