Oh wow. So, when is Jerry Springer show coming to Pakistan?
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
Cheating spouses keep Pakistani private detective busy
-
Down payment for FactFinders to check on an unfaithful partner is $5,500
-
Clients are mostly wealthy Pakistanis who live here, or in Britain, US or UAE
LAHORE: Twenty-three years of military service come in handy when Masood Haider gets a call from a suspicious spouse. He quickly dispatches a surveillance team to keep tabs on the partner believed to be heading off for an illicit rendezvous.
“What was taken as taboo 20 to 25 years ago is no more taken that way,” said Haider, 53, a former army pilot who founded FactFinders, Pakistan’s first licenced private detective agency. The business of exposing cheating spouses, he says, is growing.
“People simply understand that if two people cannot live under one roof and they cannot co-exist peacefully it is better to disengage and carry on with their lives instead of dragging it on.”
Men and women are both becoming increasingly assertive about confronting unfaithful spouses. “When I opened this company I was not sure whether Pakistani men would confide in me regarding their wives,” said Haider, in his spacious office in Lahore where he began his venture on Valentine’s Day two years ago. “But to my surprise the first case I received was of a cheating wife.”
His services do not come cheap. The down payment for FactFinders to check on an unfaithful partner is $5,500 – over Rs 500,000, out of reach of most people. Clients are mostly wealthy Pakistanis who live here, or in Britain, the US or UAE and want to keep a close eye on spouses or fiancées from afar.
His investigations are not restricted to cases of infidelity. One man, for example, desperately wanted Haider to retrieve a stolen computer with compromising pictures of his wife. But it is mostly husbands or wives tormented by suspicion of cheating who turn to him.
For the really desperate, there is an emergency hotline. “I think if women could afford it, 80 percent of Pakistani women would be here,” said a woman client. “In our culture women are discouraged. They are expected to suck it up and be quiet about it. I am done with the being scared part.”
His staff of 30, scattered across Pakistan with a few in Britain for clients there, are recruited from retired military and police officers and the financial industry.
Some philanderers go to creative extremes to avoid being caught. A wealthy man in Karachi posed as a rent-a-car driver when meeting his lover. To keep a closer watch, Haider deployed a female detective agent disguised as a maid in the woman’s house.
“So, under one roof, the driver was not the driver and the maid was not the maid. It was ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ going on in real life,” said Haider, referring to the US television soap opera. Most infidelity takes place in the first five years of marriage or 20 years into married life, he pointed out.
The indiscretions may be one reason why divorce rates are rising. The Islamabad Arbitration Council, where divorces are officially registered, says the number of broken marriages have doubled in the last 10 years. In 2011, there were 557 divorces filed in the capital alone, compared to 208 in 2002.
Even after 150 cases, some still shock Haider.
“A client caught his wife red-handed in the bedroom with her lover,” said Haider, who retired from the army in 2000. “Instead of being ashamed, she blamed the lover for being caught.”
“‘It is because of this idiot that I was caught. Otherwise I was doing it for three years’,” Haider laughingly quoted her as telling her husband. “I thought ‘look at the guts of this lady’.” reuters
who would pay 5 lacs and when comes to know the partner was really cheating then saara paisa zaya gaya 