Meet Rajani Pandit: Four Decades in the Shadows as India’s First Lady Detective
Meet Rajani Pandit: Four Decades in the Shadows as India’s First Lady Detective
Rajani Pandit, India’s first lady detective, has spent four decades unmasking lies, solving 75,000 cases, and counselling lives, all while challenging societal norms.
Since the early 1980s, when the notion of a female private investigator in India was almost unthinkable, Rajani Pandit has built a career rooted in curiosity, grit, and an unyielding pursuit of truth. Born in 1962 in Mumbai to a father in the Crime Investigation Department, she began as a college student helping friends untangle personal problems. Her knack for observation and logical deduction soon led her into missing person searches, surveillance work, and undercover assignments.
Over the past 40 years, Pandit claims to have solved around 75,000 cases, ranging from corporate fraud and counterfeit rackets to domestic disputes and political espionage. She often acts as more than just a detective, offering counselling, mediating family conflicts, and guiding troubled youths. In one case, her interventions helped a disinterested engineering student overcome destructive habits and rebuild his life.
Her work has brought both acclaim and danger. She has infiltrated illicit networks, exposed large-scale fake goods operations, and even assisted police informally. Yet the profession’s hazards are never far away, she has faced threats, intimidation, and mob hostility, including during a court case over the piracy of her book.
In 1991, she founded her own detective agency after gaining public attention through a Delhi Doordarshan interview. Since then, her reputation has inspired filmmakers, with a web series on her life currently in the works.
For Pandit, each case is more than a puzzle — it’s a human story. “Maine jab se pesha apnaaya hai tab se maut mere saath hi hai,” she says, reflecting on the risks of her profession. Yet she continues to chase the truth, guided by the belief that real success lies not in secrecy, but in changing lives.
