THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Glued to their office work 24X7, many parents in Kerala who have little time for their children are paying a price to get to know juniors better. Like their counterparts in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, they are hiring private sleuths to spy on their kids. Love affairs of their kids are no longer the only issues as drug abuse, rackets linking pornography and blackmail are on the rise. And such assignments cost Rs 3,000-5,000 per task, not too heavy a price to pay when the parents are mostly clueless about their wards’ activities. ‘’Mostly it’s a problem pertaining to children in their mid-to-late teens from middle class, upper middle class families. Parents gift them large sums without any question, not bothering to find out how they spend it,’’ says Cherian Thomas, director of Travancore Investigation and Security Services in Thiruvananthapuram. Trouble begins when the children seek more money and start throwing tantrums; this compels the parents to approach investigators.Cherian’s organisation even has a separate wing called ‘child movement’ to investigate these matters. ‘’More number of cases on child shadowing comes from parents of teenage boys; a 10:2 ratio,’’ he says. Another agency in Kochi, Shadow Consulting and Investigations, also has six to ten cases a month concerning child- shadowing. ‘’NRI children whose parents visit once or twice a year have plenty of money and lots of time to spare. In many cases, it is the fathers who want their sons shadowed,’’ says Denish Xavier, Shadows Consulting and Investigations. In the case of girls, the requirement is for tapping phone.‘’Parents ask us to tape their conversations,’’ he adds. With more and more youngsters from Kerala studying in other states, quite a few parents want to track their activities from far, says C J Babu, general manager, Southern Detective Agency, Kochi. ‘’We investigate such cases without hampering the student’s privacy on the campus. We then submit a report to the parent,’’ he said. More often than not, the report leads to a big showdown within the family, often with damaging results where trust deficit comes out into the open. “There is a huge disconnect between parents and children these days,”
says Krishnaprasad Sreedhar, former professor and head of the department
of psychology, Kerala University. He cites the example of the
parents who approached him for advice after they realized their daughter
had been systematically bunking school for some time to spend the day
with her boyfriend. ‘’If the parents had sought the services of an
investigating agency as soon as they first came to know of it, things
wouldn’t have gone out of hand,’’ says Krishnaprasad. However, police
officials feel the role of investigative agencies is overrated. S Ramesh
Babu, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Administration),
Thiruvananthapuram, says it would be better if the parents themselves
handled these matters more tactfully by taking time out of their busy
schedule.“It is impossible for agencies to run after each and every
child. These agencies have their limitations when aspects of legality
come into play.” The police are convinced that outside intervention
would become an issue while dealing with children who are 18 years old
or more. At the end of the day, sleuths can only show the direction,
it’s up to the parents to act, they say.
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