Sherlock meets Shaadi: How families are vetting brides secretly

On a hazy Saturday morning in Jaipur, a private detective’s Honda Activa went crisscrossing the lanes of Brahmapuri. The destination: Johari Bazaar, where a young bride-to-be worked as a salesgirl in an imitation jewellery shop. A friend of the detective had been undercover at the store for two weeks, posing as a helper, observing her.

Inside, the girl’s phone kept buzzing. Each time she answered, her voice dropped, almost sheepishly telling the caller not to disturb her at work.

After a hearty lunch at Laxmi Mishtan Bhandar, the detective went about his next task: tailing the bride-to-be. He drove towards Panna Meena ka Kund near Amer Fort where she had been observed to meet someone every weekend. There, the detective pretended to be a guide narrating local history, while sneakily capturing pictures on-the-go. He had been doing this on multiple weekends.

His findings: a hidden relationship, concealed smoking habit and misrepresented family business.

This Jaipur case is part of a rising pattern where Indian families are outsourcing trust, especially of the bridal variety.

For a long while, bridegrooms were the ones under scrutiny, driven by reports of hidden addictions, affairs, other marriages, or financial liabilities.

But now, investigators say, the focus is on brides as well after social media amplification of a few high-profile cases that went viral—like the Meerut drum-cement murder and the Raja Raghuvanshi honeymoon killing.

Even as crimes by women are dwarfed by crimes committed against them, what used to be done quietly through whispers exchanged between neighbours is today a structured investigation, complete with planted helpers, GPS trackers and long surveillance trails.

“Bride verification cases currently make up 80% of matrimonial inquiries we receive,” says Baldev K Puri, founder of AMX Detectives and national deputy general secretary of the Association of Professional Detectives of India.

And it’s not just metropolitan India: private detectives in tier-2 cities, from Jaipur to Gwalior and Bhopal, report rising requests for bridal verification. “We handle over 500 such cases a year from small towns alone,” says Subhash Chaudhary, zonal head of Action Detective, a company operating across India since 2009.


WHY BRIDES? WHY NOW?
The demand for bridal background checks hasn’t emerged in a vacuum.

First, headline crimes have left families shaken. “Whenever such cases dominate the news, we see a spike in inquiries,” says detective Praveen Kumar of Praveen Vijay Detective and Security Services, Gwalior.

Second, the social fabric itself has changed. With nuclear families, migration and reduced neighbourhood familiarity, parents began looking for structured ways to verify a potential match.

Interstate and even cross-country alliances add further complications. “Neighbours don’t know each other anymore. The police won’t intervene in what is seen as a personal matter. That is where we step in,” says Sanjay Singh, managing director at Delhi-based Indian Detective Agency.

He reckons the rise of pre-marital investigations is a response to a growing “communication gap”.

Matrimonial apps and social media profiles widen the pool of choices but also open the door to impersonation, inflated job or income claims, and fraud.

“Marriage today is based on verification, not assumptions,” says Tanya Puri, CEO, Lady Detectives India. “Earlier families mostly checked grooms, now brides are equally under scrutiny. We have uncovered brides concealing debts, addictions, false qualifications, even dual lives.”

Some deceptions are elaborate. She recalls a case where a potential bride’s entire family turned out to be scamsters, like in movies. “The parents and siblings were all fake, played by a group running a scam through matrimonial websites. They would cultivate relationships, extract gifts and jewellery, and then cancel the wedding weeks before.” It took Tanya nearly seven weeks to crack the case, which rivals the plot of the movie Dolly Ki Doli .

“This wasn’t common a decade ago,” says a Delhi-based detective, who did not want to be named. “Now, families want to be absolutely certain before they fix an alliance.” Their recent cases include a Delhi bride whose family concealed crippling debts and a Lucknow woman whose first marriage was quietly hidden. Both weddings were called off once the truth emerged.

In another case in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, a family suspected that a prospective bride was hiding financial troubles. Investigators, blending into the local market, observed her interactions with shopkeepers, noted patterns of debt, collected whispers from neighbours and noticed how she handled money. The findings did not match her family’s claims. Families want to check everything: income, family stability, past relationships, even lifestyle habits.

In Madhya Pradesh, a bride-to-be was paying her family’s EMI, managing the house hold and affording herself a rather upscale lifestyle —all at the age of 21, raising suspicion in the minds of her prospective in-laws, who hailed from Kerala. A quick background check revealed a history of online financial scams, complete with an ongoing case with the state police, and a dismissed bail by the High Court of Madhya Pradesh.

Up a narrow stairway in a building in Satya Niketan, New Delhi, the fourth floor opens into an office that feels like a stage set for intrigue: paintings, dummy cam eras and binoculars placed to signal the trade. This is where Singh of Indian Detective Agency works.

For Singh, the demand is steady from both India and abroad. “Pre-marital bridal checks are no longer rare. They have become part of the modern marriage process.”

AN EXPENSIVE AFFAIR
When families are paying upwards of lakh for an investigation, what exactly are they buying? Puri of AMX Detectives outlines the essentials: “Character, temperament, and lifestyle. Family involvement in personal matters. Past or present romantic relationships. Financial obligations. Medical or psychological history. Any ongoing or past legal issues. Even the family’s values and intentions.” Groundwork often starts with discreet neighbourhood checks.

Kumar says his teams “speak to neighbours, pose as customers at local shops, and assess the financial status quietly”. Others rely on social media footprints or pretext calls to workplaces.

In some cases bugs are used, while directional mics capture whispers in crowded cafés. Even trips to different locations are part of the modus operandi.

That explains the cost: Tanya Puri of Lady Detectives India says fees can range from Rs 25,000 for a short probe to as high as Rs 6 lakh for long-term surveillance with multiple operatives.

Kumar in Gwalior puts the cost of a typical case between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 5 lakh, depending on complexity. “Some wrap up in weeks, others can stretch into months,” he says.

A month-long investigation in Rishikesh had one detective posing as a pushcart vegetable seller in Tapovan, keeping watch on a bride-to-be, while another doubled as a local driver, shadowing her rides between Rishikesh and Haridwar.

A tracker hooked onto the vehicle her lover was known to use created a digital breadcrumb of his movements.

Weeks of logs and photos confirmed the groom’s family’s suspicions. Investigators emphasise that much of this is about confirmation rather than discovery. “Families already have doubts,” says Singh. “They come to us for evidence.”

The result is often a file with photographs, notes from conversations and summaries of financial or legal standing—the quiet ledger of modern-day matchmaking.

LEGALLY GREY
The law around all of this remains murky.

Background screening itself isn’t new. Corporates have long run verification checks without consent, but in the marital sphere, private investigations occupy a murkier zone. Unlike corporate files that stay internal, evidence from matrimonial probes can spill into complaints of fraud or criminal cases.

India has no single legislation governing private detectives. Unlike countries where licensing regimes exist, here investigators operate under a patchwork of statutes— Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the IT Act, the Evidence Act and, most recently, the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act.

Advocate Bagesh Kumar Singh of law firm Legals 365 says the DPDP Act has raised the stakes. “Families need to remember that hiring a detective doesn’t give them the right to invade someone’s privacy. If an agency gathers data illegally, the client can also be at risk,” he says.

What detectives can legally access is limited: public or consent-based records, social media profiles, discreet neighbourhood checks.

Hacking emails, pulling call records, tapping phones, or impersonating police officers are all off-limits. Illegally obtained evidence can be admissible if relevant, but as Singh notes, “The court may accept the proof, but the detective and the client could still be prosecuted for how it was obtained.”

Puri of AMX Detectives says the profession has been lobbying for a licensing law for years. “Right now, we rely on professional associations to set codes of ethics and training. A proper statute would help distinguish professionals from amateurs who give the industry a bad name,” he argues.

For families, the takeaway is simple: pick established agencies, sign clear contracts, and avoid requests that could push investigators into illegal territory. Beyond criminal law, clients risk civil suits for defamation or invasion of privacy if sensitive findings are leaked.

Ultimately, verification must be legal, moral and fair.

Marriage in India has always been equal parts trust and transaction. The rise of bridal background checks shows how much more transactional it is becoming.