The spy who came in for the polls

In a district in central Punjab, a nail-biting contest is brewing. A filmstar who has been a four-time MP from the constituency versus the incumbent who had won the last election by a wafer-thin margin of a few thousand votes. Weeks before the polling date, the constituency is hit by a smear campaign. Embarrassing details tumble out, clans get involved. Contents of one of the candidate’s speech are leaked to the local media. An inflammatory video too does the rounds. Looks like somebody’s election campaign just got derailed. Operating silently in the background, a team of private detectives wraps up and heads back. Their job, in this district, is done.

While this is a hypothetical sequence of events, it might very well be a truthful narrative of any constituency, anywhere in the country. For private detective agencies, this election season is ripe with possibility of ‘extra business’. For political parties, it’s all about winning.

“I have been flooded with calls,” says the 71-year-old Subhash Wadhawan, who has been a detective for almost half a century now and sports the James Bond theme as his caller tune. “There was a demand in 2009 but this year has seen maximum number of cases. In the last 10 days, I’ve been approached by nearly 35 people to take up cases. And all of them want their cases fast-tracked.”

Despite all the secrecy accompanying them, political espionage cases, nevertheless, fall into three broad categories. To verify credentials of their own candidates, to verify opponent claims and to check on dissident members within their own parties to avoid embarrassment. “In these elections, anybody who has been denied a ticket is a major factor,” says Kunwar Vikram Singh, president of the Association of Private Detectives and Investigators (APDI), who is currently on an assignment in central Punjab. The most dangerous enemies, he adds, are within the parties.

Earlier in March, the Congress offices were ransacked in Chhattisgarh over ticket denial, while both AAP and BJP have seen discontent over tickets. (Think party stalwarts like Jaswant Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi, and LK Advani.)

“Maybe it (the surge in cases) has something to do with the Aam Aadmi Party. Verification of the candidates nominated has become important this year,” says Naman Jain, head of the Delhi-based Sleuths India, whose agency has received more than 25 cases this season. If AAP is a factor, the ruling party’s fear of losing the elections has also spurred interest in conducting investigations, says Wadhawan.

The turnaround time for a case in these ‘fast-track’ times is around three to five days, according to some agencies. The cost, on a case-to-case basis, varies from ₹5 lakh to ₹25 lakh. “We work in adverse conditions,” says Wadhawan. “Our investigations start even before election dates are announced. And then, within a week our detectives have to learn everything about the constituency, and get information. This is really what the party cadres should be doing but parties have no cadres anymore.” This, despite the fact that the Congress, BJP and even AAP claim to have more than 1 crore members.

With sophisticated services such as “voter management packages, risk analysis and gathering of political intelligence”, these agencies claim to be much more than mere detectives. Their success rates are also 100 per cent. “Really, there is nothing like an unsuccessful investigation,” says Jain.

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