Is your spouse healthy? Ask a detective

Increasingly, detectives in the city are being hired to run background checks on the health history of prospective brides and grooms, reports Neha Bhayana.

First, there were character checks. Then there were bank balance and property checks. And now, there are health checks.

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Increasingly, detectives in the city are being hired to run background checks on the health history of prospective brides and grooms. “These days, a lot of young people want to ensure that the person they are marrying does not have any chronic ailments like HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis,” said Sameer Prabhu, a detective. Sexually transmitted diseases and impotency are other common concerns.

Ajit Singh of the Satya Niketan-based Hatfield Detectives says many more parents put in requests to check the prospective bride or groom for health problems. “One fifth of our pre-marriage investigations now are regarding health.”

Detectives of Secret Eye Detective Services, for instance, keep a tab on medicines brought from the chemist and the specialty of the doctor a person visits, says its managing director D Kumar. “And, it’s not just health that’s a concern. A lot of our clients want to know the sexual orientation of the spouse-to-be.”

An agency in Janakpuri recently handled a case where the bride’s parents wanted to know if the groom suffered from a venereal disease. “They wanted us to surreptitiously take blood samples. For such cases we ensure the place where we take the sample is close to a laboratory,” said Abhishek Gupta, owner, Max Detectives.