Detective agencies in Delhi: list, the law and how to hire one

The quick answer

There are hundreds of detective agencies in Delhi, and no government register lists them, because India has no licensing law for private detectives: the Private Detective Agencies (Regulation) Bill, 2007 was withdrawn from the Rajya Sabha on 23 March 2020 without being passed. Starleads' Detective Agencies in Delhi list has 634 agencies (count on 30 October 2026), 550 of them giving Delhi and 64 New Delhi as their city, and 84% with a mobile number. To hire one, check the company on MCA, ask whether it also supplies guards (then it needs a PSARA licence), get the scope and fee in writing, and refuse any agency that offers phone records, bank statements or other data it cannot lawfully get.

This guide is for businesses rather than households. Companies in Delhi NCR hire detective agencies for pre-employment checks, vendor and partner due diligence, counterfeit and trademark investigations, insurance claims and internal fraud. Law firms, background-verification companies and security firms work with them as partners, and suppliers sell to them. It covers what Starleads' data shows about Delhi's agencies and where they sit, the law as it stands (including what the DPDP Act changes), what businesses use them for, how to choose and hire one step by step, what drives the fee, the red flags, and how to reach agencies as customers or partners within TRAI's rules. The Starleads figures in it are counts of contacts in Starleads' data, not an official census.

Detective agencies in Delhi: what Starleads' data shows

Starleads keeps state lists of detective agencies for three states, and Delhi's is the second largest. Its All-India detective agencies list has 3,354 agencies across 26 states and 60 cities, and the top cities in it are Mumbai (570), Delhi (550), Bengaluru (516), Chennai (182) and Pune (169). Delhi and Mumbai are close: if you add Delhi's 64 "New Delhi" rows, the capital edges ahead of Mumbai's city count, although the Maharashtra list (796) is bigger than Delhi's as a state because it adds Pune, Nagpur, Thane and Nashik.

List	Agencies	With a mobile	With an email	With a website	Where most are
Delhi	634	84%	55%	16%	Delhi (550), New Delhi (64)
Maharashtra	796	90%	50%	11%	Mumbai (570), Pune (169), Nagpur (12)
Karnataka	603	99%	44%	12%	Bengaluru (516), Hubballi (18), Mysuru (15)
All India	3,354	89%	50%	12%	Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune

A few things in the Delhi list are worth knowing before you use it:

• Most of it is detective work, but not all of it is only detective work. By category, the Delhi list has Detective Agencies (431), Security & Detective Services (192) and Computer & Cyber Crime Investigation Services (6), plus smaller groups such as corporate and domestic investigation. In the free 60-row sample, 33 of the 60 business names include "Security", "Securitas" or "Protection". Many Delhi firms run guarding and investigation side by side, which matters for the licence question below.
• It is a contact list, not a quality rating. The sample has a contact person's name in every row and a website in 50 of 60, but the list does not say how good an agency is, how long it has traded or whether it is a member of any association. You still have to check each firm (see the steps below).
• The categories are as the businesses listed themselves. The sample has two rows that are clearly something else (a service apartment filed under domestic investigation, and a matrimonial bureau under security and detective services). Read the names before you call.
• The landline is often the office. 43% of the Delhi rows have a landline, mostly 011 numbers, and 67% name a contact person, so a call to the office reaches someone who can take a brief.

Where are they? The sample's addresses cluster in a handful of office districts: around Bhikaji Cama Place and Nehru Place in south Delhi, Lajpat Nagar, Kalkaji and Malviya Nagar, Pitampura and Netaji Subhash Place in the north-west, Vikaspuri and Hari Nagar in the west, and Laxmi Nagar, Preet Vihar and Dilshad Garden across the Yamuna. A few sit in Okhla Industrial Area, near the factories and offices that are their clients. Agencies serving Gurugram and Noida often have their head office in Delhi and work across NCR, so a Delhi list is a sensible start for a company based anywhere in NCR; our guide to the list of companies in Delhi covers the city's other trades.

Is a private detective legal in India? The law in 2026

Yes, running a detective agency is legal, and no licence specific to detectives is required, because Parliament never passed one. That surprises many people, and it is the single most useful thing to know when you hire one: nobody has checked the agency for you. Here is what the law does and doesn't say, from the sources we read on 30 October 2026.

Law or document	What it says	What it means when you hire a Delhi agency
Private Detective Agencies (Regulation) Bill, 2007	Would have required every agency to hold a licence from central and state boards, keep a register of staff and clients, and punish agents who violate a person's privacy. Introduced 13 August 2007, Standing Committee report 13 February 2009, withdrawn 23 March 2020 (PRS Legislative Research)	There is no detective licence to ask for. An agency that shows you a "government licence to investigate" is showing you something else, such as a company or trade registration; ask what it is
Private Security Agencies (Regulation) Act, 2005 (PSARA)	No person may run a private security agency, one that provides guards to any business or person, without a licence from the state's Controlling Authority (text of the Act, sections 2 and 4)	If the agency also supplies guards, as many "security and detective" firms in Delhi do, it needs a PSARA licence for that part. Ask for it. Investigation work alone is not covered
Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023	Personal data may be processed only for a lawful purpose, with the person's consent or for certain legitimate uses (section 4); a business may use a data processor only under a valid contract and stays responsible for what the processor does (section 8) (text of the Act)	When an agency collects personal data for you, you are likely to be the data fiduciary and the agency your processor. Put it in a contract, define the purpose, and don't ask for data you have no lawful ground to hold
DPDP Rules, 2025	Notified on 14 November 2025 with an 18-month phased timeline; standalone consent notices, breach notices to affected people, and replies to rights requests within 90 days (Press Information Bureau)	Build consent and notices into your background-check process now, not when the deadlines arrive. Our DPDP Act guide has the dates

Two parts of the DPDP Act matter most to a company that uses an agency. First, section 7 lists "legitimate uses" for which consent is not needed, and one of them is processing "for the purposes of employment or those related to safeguarding the employer from loss or liability, such as prevention of corporate espionage, maintenance of confidentiality of trade secrets, intellectual property, classified information". That is the ground most internal and employee-related investigations rest on, but it is a ground for the employer's own purposes, not a licence to dig into anyone's private life. Second, the Schedule sets penalties of up to ₹250 crore for failing to take reasonable security safeguards to prevent a personal data breach, which includes breaches by your processor. A careless agency holding your employees' documents on a personal phone is your risk.

The 2007 Bill is still worth reading for what it tried to fix. PRS's summary notes that it would have made "breaching of an individual's right to privacy" punishable and required agencies to record "the gist of the work it has undertaken for a client". Those are good questions to ask any agency today, even though no law makes them answer.

The trade has a self-regulatory body. The Association of Professional Detectives and Investigators (APDI) says on its about page that it has a Code of Ethics, a Code of Conduct and disciplinary rules for its members, and it publishes office-bearers for a Delhi chapter. It also says it is recognised by the Government of India as the representative body of private detectives; that is APDI's own statement. Membership is a reasonable thing to ask about, but it is a sign of seriousness, not a licence.

What businesses in Delhi use detective agencies for

The pages that rank for "detective agency in Delhi" are agencies' own sites, and most lead with matrimonial and personal cases. Businesses buy something different, and it pays to name the job precisely, because the method, the paperwork and the lawful ground change with it.

Job	What the agency does	What you should get	Lawful ground and care points
Pre-employment checks	Confirms past employment, education and address; sometimes a local reference check	A report per candidate showing what was confirmed, by whom and when	Take the candidate's written consent and tell them what will be checked; collect only what the role needs
Vendor, distributor or partner due diligence	Confirms the firm exists at its address, who runs it, its standing in the market and any disputes	A site-visit note with photos of the premises, plus public-record findings	Mostly business data; do the free checks yourself first (MCA, GST, court records)
Counterfeit and trademark investigation	Finds where fake goods are made, stocked or sold, often with test purchases	Evidence your lawyer can use for a raid or a suit: invoices, photos, addresses	Work through your IP lawyer from the start so the evidence is usable
Internal fraud, leakage or theft	Looks into stock loss, kickbacks or leaks of confidential information	Findings and evidence, kept confidential, for a disciplinary or legal process	The DPDP "employment" legitimate use can apply; keep it to the incident and the people involved
Insurance claim investigation	Checks the facts of a claim on the ground	An investigation report for the claims team	Insurers may keep their own vendor panels; ask the insurer
Asset tracing before recovery	Looks for a defaulter's business premises and assets	Addresses and public-record findings for your lawyer or recovery team	Bank and phone records come only through courts and lawful process, never from an agency

Before you hire anyone for the second job, do the free checks yourself: a company's status, directors and registered office are on MCA, and a GSTIN can be checked on the GST portal. Our company search guide walks through each look-up. An agency adds the site visit and the market enquiries that public records can't give you.

How to choose and hire a detective agency in Delhi, step by step

Because there is no licence to check, the burden of checking falls on you. This is the process we would follow for a business case.

1. Write a one-page brief. What you need to know, why (the business reason and the lawful ground), the people or firms involved, the deadline, and what the output must be (a report, photos, a site-visit note, evidence for a lawyer). A clear brief gets you comparable quotes and keeps the agency inside the line.
2. Make a shortlist of four to six. Sources: referrals from your lawyer or HR peers, APDI's member and chapter pages, and the Delhi list filtered for the category you need (corporate or cyber investigation, or general detective agencies). Look for a fixed office address, a company or LLP rather than only a mobile number, and a website that names the people in charge.
3. Check the company. If it is a company or LLP, look it up on MCA for status (active or struck off), date of incorporation and directors. Check its GSTIN is active. Search the name with "fraud", "complaint" and "court" to see what comes up.
4. Ask about the licence that does exist. If the firm also supplies guards (192 of the 634 Delhi rows, nearly a third, are filed under security and detective services), ask for its PSARA licence and check it with the state's Controlling Authority; our security agencies guide explains how. If it doesn't supply guards, ask how it is registered and who its directors or partners are.
5. Interview the person who will run your case. Ask how they would approach your brief, what they will and won't do, how they record evidence, and who on their team will handle the information. A good agency tells you what it cannot do.
6. Get a written proposal. Scope, method, timeline, fee (fixed or per day), expenses that will be billed, the format of the report, and what happens if the work finds nothing.
7. Sign a contract that covers data. Confidentiality, the purpose the data may be used for, where it will be stored, deletion or return at the end, no sub-contracting without your consent, and a promise to use only lawful methods. Under section 8 of the DPDP Act you stay responsible for your processor, so this clause protects you, not only the people being checked.
8. Pay against milestones, with a GST invoice. An advance for a defined first phase, the balance on the report. Avoid paying everything in cash up front.
9. Review the report before you act on it. Ask how each finding was obtained. If a finding rests on a source the agency won't explain, or on records it shouldn't have, don't use it, and think again about the agency.

How much does a detective agency in Delhi charge?

We could not find a published, reliable rate card for Delhi, and the agencies that rank for this search mostly ask you to call for a quote, so this guide does not quote figures. What we can say is what drives the price, so you can compare quotes like for like:

• Type of work. A desk check of records costs less than field work; surveillance and test purchases need people on the ground for days.
• People and days. Field work is often priced by the number of investigators and the days or hours they spend. Ask for the day rate and the expected number of days.
• Travel and expenses. Work outside Delhi, across NCR or in other states adds travel, stay and local costs. Agree a cap.
• Volume. Pre-employment checks are often priced per candidate, so ask how the rate changes with volume; vendor checks are often priced per firm.
• Evidence standard. Work that must stand up in a legal process (properly documented test purchases, photos with time and place, witness notes) takes longer than an informal enquiry.

Get at least three written quotes on the same brief. A quote far below the rest usually means less field work than you think, or a method you won't want to be associated with. Ask what is included, and whether GST is extra.

Red flags: what no agency can lawfully do for you

The most common complaint about the trade is not price but method. Some things are off limits whatever an agency says, and offering them is a reason to walk away:

• Call detail records, phone location or phone tapping. Telecom companies release them to the authorities under legal process, not to private agencies. An agency offering someone's call records is offering data it cannot lawfully hold.
• Bank statements, tax returns or medical records. The same applies: these come through courts, regulators or the person's consent, never from a "contact" at a bank or hospital.
• Getting into phones, email or social media accounts. Access to someone else's device or account without authority is not something any agency can lawfully do for you, and evidence obtained that way can damage your own case.
• Posing as police or a government official, or using official-looking uniforms or ID.
• "Guaranteed" results or a promise to find anything about anyone. Investigation is uncertain; a promise of certainty is a sales line.
• No paperwork. No written scope, no contract, cash only, no GST invoice, no fixed address.

The 2007 Bill would have punished agents who violate a person's right to privacy; it lapsed, but the DPDP Act now sets duties and penalties for whoever processes personal data, and that includes you as the client. Keep every investigation to a clear business purpose and to people and firms connected with it.

Selling to or partnering with Delhi's detective agencies

The other reader of this guide wants Delhi's agencies as customers or partners. Starleads' list page says the people who buy the detective agencies list are mostly background-verification firms, law firms and security companies looking for partners, and there are clear reasons each would:

• Background-verification firms need field partners for address and employment checks in Delhi's localities and across NCR. Pair the detective list with Starleads' HR professionals in Delhi (1,647 contacts, 99% with a mobile number) for the client side; our HR database guide explains that list.
• Law firms and IP practices need investigators for counterfeit and recovery work. Starleads' Lawyers & Legal Firms in Delhi list has 2,057 contacts, 98% with a mobile number, if you are an agency looking for law-firm clients; see our advocates list guide.
• Security and facility firms partner with investigators for clients who want both. The Facility Management & Security Services in Delhi list has 1,398 contacts, 99% with a mobile number.
• Placement agencies sometimes buy checks for the candidates they place. Delhi has 5,691 placement and recruitment agencies in Starleads' data; our placement agencies guide covers that trade.
• Suppliers sell agencies cameras and recording equipment, software for case management and reports, vehicles, training and professional indemnity insurance.

Starleads' Delhi list costs ₹499 plus 18% GST, like every city, state and specialisation list, and 60 real contacts are free to check first. It doesn't promise that every number still works, which is why the sample is free. In the list builder you can combine detective agencies with other trades for Delhi, keep only rows with a mobile or an email, and see the count before you pay.

When you contact agencies, TRAI's rules apply as they do to any business call or message:

• DND (NCPR). TRAI's customer preference registration page (checked on 30 October 2026) lets any subscriber block commercial communication fully or by category, by mode (voice and SMS, auto-dialer and robo calls), by time band and by day, by SMS or call to 1909, through IVRS, an approved app or an OTP-based web portal. Check mobile numbers before any promotional call or SMS; our DND check guide shows how.
• DLT for SMS. Promotional and transactional SMS go only through a DLT-registered sender, with a registered header and approved templates; see our DLT registration guide.
• Consent and courtesy. Say who you are and why you are calling, call in business hours, record and honour any request not to be contacted again, and keep messages relevant to the agency's business. Our 7-day calling plan sets out a first week.

Starleads sells lists of businesses and professionals only. It doesn't sell lists of private individuals, and nothing in its data is meant for tracing a person. For Starleads' figures across India, see the Insights page.

Live figure: the Detective Agencies in India list has 3,354 agencies today, 89% of them with a mobile number. The biggest lists in that industry are below.

• Mumbai 570 contacts · 50% email · 90% mobile ₹499
• Bengaluru 516 contacts · 47% email · 99% mobile ₹499

Questions people ask

Is a private detective legal in India?

Yes. Running a detective agency is lawful, and there is no detective-specific licence, because the Private Detective Agencies (Regulation) Bill, 2007 was withdrawn in March 2020 without being passed. What an agency does must still be lawful: it cannot obtain phone, bank or medical records, access accounts without authority, or pose as an official. If it supplies guards, it needs a PSARA licence for that.

How do I hire a detective in Delhi?

Write a short brief, shortlist four to six agencies with a fixed office and named people, check the company on MCA and its GSTIN, interview the person who will handle the case, get a written proposal and a contract that covers confidentiality and data, and pay against milestones with a GST invoice.

How much does it cost to hire a detective in Delhi?

There is no published standard rate. Fees depend on the type of work (desk checks cost less than field work), the number of investigators and days, travel, volume (per-candidate rates for employee checks) and the standard of evidence needed. Compare at least three written quotes on the same brief.

How much do detective agencies charge in India?

The same factors apply across India, and agencies generally quote per case, per candidate or per investigator-day. Be wary of a quote far below the rest, and of any agency that promises results.

How many detective agencies are there in Delhi?

No official count exists, because agencies aren't licensed. Starleads' Delhi list has 634 agencies, 550 giving Delhi and 64 New Delhi as their city. It's the count of contacts in Starleads' data, not a census.

Which is the best detective agency in Delhi?

No independent body ranks them, and every agency site calls itself the best. Judge on the things you can check: company status on MCA, a fixed office, named people, membership of an association such as APDI, a clear written proposal, and willingness to say what it won't do.

Can a detective agency get call records or bank details?

Not lawfully. These records are released only to authorities under legal process, or by the person they belong to. An agency that offers them is a reason to walk away, and using such material can harm your own case.

Do detective agencies do corporate background checks in Delhi?

Many do. Starleads' Delhi list has categories for corporate investigation and computer and cyber crime investigation as well as general detective agencies. For employee checks, take the candidate's written consent and check only what the role needs.