A Seasoned Hand: Bhavna Paliwal at work Photo: Vikram Sharma A Seasoned Hand: Bhavna Paliwal at work Photo: Vikram Sharma

Bhavna Paliwal is all smiles as she leans back on her black leather executive chair. She hasn’t slept in 24 hours312bet, having tracked a suspect across the hills near Delhi. “That’s the nature of a private detective’s job—one minute you are having chaat with the family, the next you’re chasing a man whose wife suspects him of having an affair,” she says.

Despite the complaint, Paliwal loves her job. This is evident from the ease with which she occupies her chair in her office, the gusto with which she laughs at the stories she tells.

The sign outside her two-room office in Pitampura says ‘astrologer.’ She prefers the mystery. “Ours isn’t a profession in which we tell people what we do. It suits me that everyone in this place thinks I’m an astrologer; it’s best if they don’t know I am a detective,” she explains.

Starting in the field was not easy though.

Paliwal always knew she wanted to do something different with her life. That is all she was sure of when she moved to Delhi as a 21-year-old. After studying journalism, she began working in the newspaper, These Days, but that was only a month-and a-half stint. She didn’t enjoy working under an editor. Then she spotted an advertisement saying the Times Detective Agency was looking for female and male detectives.

“Women make the best investigators because we share information willingly with other women, and we are good at getting people to share information.”

Why did she pick such an unusual profession? “I was always inspired by Kiran Bedi, the first woman to join the Indian Police Service (IPS). I’d see her on television and in the news as a child. I wanted to be like her. I wanted people to take notice of me,” she replies.

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Her first case was unnerving as well as a useful lesson. Her senior Pradeep Sharma sent her to a housing society to find out if a woman had opted for a second marriage. While she was sleuthing in what she thought was a covert manner, the woman’s father came up to her and asked who had sent her. He, as it turned out, was a former Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer. Paliwal remembers she was caught off-guard by this fact. But she thought, “If I get scared now, I’ll always be scared.” She twisted her words around and showed him her student ID card to convince him she hadn’t been sent by anyone. “I don’t know if he believed me but I did find out that the woman had got married a second time. And then I got out of there,” she laughs.

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After that, she never looked back. Pradeep Sharma mentored her in the Times Detective Agency. In a couple of years, she found herself handling all the cases that women brought in. These included cases regarding cheating spouses.

“Women are worried sharing their personal details with male detectives—they’re scared it will be used to blackmail them—and feel more comfortable talking to another woman,” she explains. Fast forward a few more years and Paliwal was heading the Times Agency’s women’s cell.

Her family was not in the know about her work. “I told them I got a desk job at a detective agency, but I didn’t say I was on the field,” she says. When Hindustan Times ran a profile of her,betef her family found out the truth through the newspaper. She recalls walking into the living room and her brother teasing her about it. “I understood that they had seen the paper. I hadn’t even told them about the profile,” she remembers.

Her family was supportive, says Paliwal. “They just laughed and said I should have told them and that as long as I was doing a job I enjoyed, they didn’t care.”

Paliwal says the male detectives often chastised female detectives, calling them useless or saying that women can’t investigate. “In my experience, women are the best investigators because we already have a grip on the art of gossip. We share information willingly with other women, and we are good at getting people to share information,” she says.

Since there’s no specific training or course for anyone wishing to be a detective, Paliwal says that you need a good mentor to break into the profession. She credits Sharma as hers. “Had he not taken a chance on me, a young girl, I wouldn’t have been able to break through and I am grateful for that.”

With little training in self-defence, Paliwal, who is 5’4 in heels, relies on chilli/pepper spray and small knives, which she always carries with her, for her safety. Earlier she would carry a taser, but tasers have since been outlawed.

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Her biggest grouse with her job right now is that there are a lot of cases in which “women are tricking Indian Administrative Service officers and such into marrying them or blackmailing these officers.” She says she feels guilty when she investigates such cases. “It doesn’t feel good knowing women are doing this,” she explains.

Avantika Mehta is a senior associate editor based out of New Delhi

(This article is a part of Outlook's March 11312bet, 2025 Women's Day special issue 'Women at Work', which explores the experiences of women in roles traditionally occupied by men. It appeared in print as 'Mystery Woman')