23 December,2010 07:04 AM IST | | Shiva Devnath
Parents and spouses hire private detectives to send them live feed of their loved ones as they club-hop through the last night of the year
Careful where you tread this New Year's Eve, for careworn parents, wary wives, and other doubting Toms in your family may just be watching your every move sitting at home.
Keeping in mind the instances of abduction, molestation, violence, and the sundry ways in which an innocent outing can go awry in this city in these times, many have decided to play extra safe and put a detective with a 3G-enabled spy cam on their dear one's trail.
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So while you're out painting the town red on December 31, your folks or spouse could be getting a live video feed of every step you take.
It doesn't mater where you have planned your New Year's party, the detectives, incognito, would buy entry passes for the same bash, tail you, capture you on their phones, and send the footage back home, where someone would be keeping a tab on whose company you move in.
Spouse watch
Take the case of Stephany D'souza, an NRI from London, who has hired a private detective to keep an eye on her husband this New Year's Eve.
For a fee of Rs 35,000, the hireling will use a high-end smartphone to give D'souza up-to-the-minute details of her consort's night out.
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She would be able to see her husband celebrating in a pub, while she sits at home watching a hi-def video grab in real time on her cell phone, hooked up with the detective's device.
For the snoop, D'souza enlisted the services of an Andheri-based detective agency, Lotus.
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Like her, eight NRIs and six Indians have approached Utpal Chowdhari, proprietor of the agency, to keep an eye on their spouses, or protect their teenaged children against hooligans and stalkers, as they party the night away at the year-end celebrations.
If you belong to the old school, though, and prefer prying and printed photographs to more progressive technology, you can deduct Rs 10,000 from the fee for some good old-fashioned spying.
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Some 70 such clients, mostly parents, have approached the detective agency to watch over their children.
Keep it clean
"Once we spot a stalker or a miscreant trying to create trouble, our detectives would casually approach the subject and ask them to be careful or dance somewhere else.
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If miscreants try to kidnap the subject, the detectives would immediately alert the police.
If the parents find their children mixing around with people of dubious character, they can contact their children and instruct them to move out of the party," said Chowdhari.
Incidentally, the agency has received many assignments from people who have recently got engaged and want to spy on their to-be better halves.
So every breath you take, they will be watching you.
Rs 35,000
Cost of hiring a detective to feed you with live 3G video feeds from the New Year's party
Ek Cutting!
Khekda
In Bambaiya slang, private detectives are referred to as khekda (crabs). The term got associated with detectives as a crab crawls on the sly behind its target and can stay undetected owing to its dexterity. Private detectives employ the same skill to snoop on their targets.
