What Private
Investigation Really
Looks Like

Shatheesh — or Menon, as your peers know you — you were formerly with PDRM Malaysia. How has it been, going from wearing the uniform to not wearing it?

Thank you for having me. So I began my career as a police officer with the Royal Malaysian Police — I served close to seven years. After that I transitioned into corporate security. And for the past fourteen years, I have been a freelance private investigator.

The difference, to put it simply: when you wear the uniform, authority precedes you. You walk into a situation and it adjusts to your presence before you say a word. When the reinvention happens — when you come into civilian life — that authority is gone. And you have to shift entirely from commanding to persuading. From people conforming to you by default to you having to earn their cooperation every single time.

Most leaders who come from authority structures find this shift much harder than they anticipated. The instinct is still to issue directives. But when the badge is not there, directives without relationship do not land the same way. You have to learn to listen first, attune first, build rapport first — and then get what you need from the interaction.

And that shift from commanding to persuading — where have you found it works best in the private investigation context specifically?

In client-facing work, everything is about attentiveness. You hear them out completely. You are compassionate. You understand what they actually need — which is very often not what they initially say they need. At the corporate security level, you still have reporting lines and hierarchy, but you do not stamp your authority. You operate on the principle of firm but polite. You get what you need through clarity and respect rather than power.

The investigative work requires a different set of skills again. You have to be completely undetectable — meaning your presence, your energy, your behaviour in any given environment must be entirely unremarkable. The moment you are noticed, the work is compromised.

Before we get into the investigative world — I want to ask something that is very practically useful for many Malaysians. Should people fear the police? And what is the best way to handle an encounter with law enforcement?

This is my humble opinion based on experience, and it has served well for the people I have shared it with. When you are dealing with authority, be humble. Just be humble. Answer the questions you are asked. You do not have to be arrogant or confrontational — that approach never ends well, regardless of who is technically right.

If you are pulled over for a potential traffic violation and the officer asks for your licence, produce it. Do not challenge the request. Do not assert your rights as a reason to withhold cooperation. The moment you take a confrontational tone with a uniformed officer, you have created a spark that is heading southward. And law enforcement agencies do have coercive powers — they can affect your freedom in ways that a few minutes of humble cooperation would have entirely avoided.

You only have to be afraid if you have done something wrong. If you have not, cooperate, answer the questions, and trust the process. Sometimes you are needed as a witness, not as a suspect. Either way, cooperation is almost always your best path. Communication, humility, and a calm tone — that is the magic formula.

I once heard an officer say during MCO: "Don't try to fool the police." And that stuck with me — because I think people underestimate how much training and intelligence actually goes into the making of a police officer. Can you give us some insight into that?

The foundation is one year of basic training. Marching drills, firearms training, outdoor activities, physical conditioning. They work the body hard — the point is to shape you physically and mentally into someone who can operate under pressure. After that, once you are posted, the upskilling continues constantly — investigation courses, witness questioning courses, forensic training. The Senior Police Officers College at Cheras runs these continuously. You are being developed throughout your service, not just at the beginning.

And the investigative intelligence that accumulates over years of service is substantial. Officers learn to read people, environments, patterns. They develop an intuition that is the product of thousands of encounters. So yes — do not try to fool the police. The gap between what you think you are concealing and what an experienced officer can detect is larger than most people imagine.

Let us get into the private investigation reality — because Hollywood has given all of us very specific ideas. What does it actually look like?

The movies provide the embellished version. The reality is considerably more patient, considerably less dramatic, and requires a very specific kind of discipline that has nothing to do with action sequences.

Take a matrimonial surveillance case — which I will address because it comes up often. If a client believes their spouse is having an affair, we hear them out completely first. Because sometimes it is mere suspicion — an overzealous, over-suspicious partner who does not have real evidence of anything. In those cases, I will actually tell them: are you sure you want to do this? Because the report may come back negative. We have produced many positive reports for spouses who turned out to be entirely faithful. We present those reports honestly. Your partner is a gem of a person. You were being a doubting Thomas.

If the situation does indicate genuine concern — then our work is photographic and observational. We follow to the point of the hotel entrance. We document who entered with whom. We pick up the evidence trail when they exit. We may buy a ticket to the same cinema, sit through the same film, and document what we observe. All of it goes into a photographic evidence report that can assist a client's legal petition if that becomes necessary.

What we do not do — and what the movies suggest we do — is bug premises. We do not go into four walls. We do not install surveillance inside private spaces. Our cutoff is ethical and it is clear. Debugging services, yes. Bugging services, no.

Let us talk about digital privacy. Is genuine privacy protection even possible anymore, or is it essentially an illusion?

Take a moderate approach and keep your digital footprint at bare minimum — that is my practical advice. Because the reality is that there is no perfect protection. Even my own Instagram account was hacked — a fresh account, barely a year old, very little content on it — and it was being logged in from Penang while I was nowhere near Penang. It happens.

What people do not appreciate is that everything you do digitally leaves a trail. Every link you click, every app you install, every account you open. If someone with the right tools — and those tools are increasingly accessible through ethical hacking communities and self-education — targets you, they can access an extraordinary amount of information. Screen recording software on a mobile phone, for example — if that has been installed on your device, everything you view, every message you scroll through, is being mirrored in real time to whoever installed it.

Strong passwords are non-negotiable. Keeping social media to bare minimum. If you maintain a Facebook account, restrict it to immediate family only. And be thoughtful about receiving electronic devices as gifts from people whose motives you are not entirely certain of — particularly in situations where trust has already been strained.

My final question — if you had one wish to make the planet a better place, what would it be?

I would wish for human beings to be more tolerant, more forgiving, and more loving. I think love is the greatest tool we have — for forgiveness, for moving forward, for connection across the differences that create conflict. If people could genuinely embrace tolerance, forgiveness, and love more fully, I believe the world would be a significantly better place to live in. For all of us.

Tolerance, forgiveness, and love. Profound and powerful. Thank you so much, Menon, for being on the show. It has been an absolute blast.

Thank you for having me. I hope it was worthwhile.