To think that private detective agencies in India are slowly yet steadily edging out their government-sponsored counterparts might seem a bit exaggerated, though it’s not completely baseless. As per a recent research, a growing number of people in the metro and urban centres are preferring private detectives over law enforcement agencies to solve their myriad new-age cases and issues. On the flip side, the majority of population (almost 85%) in the hinterland or rural areas still put faith in the government-backed system for their needs. Well, from the research, one thing is pretty clear: private players are now being taken seriously, at least in big cities to start with.

Based on the research, our team swung into action to find out, why private detectives in India are desirable in the big cities, but not in the small centres? The question looked plausible enough to get to the bottom of it and then, we started out on the mission. We chose Mumbai this time, landed in the city and one-by-one, started seeking permission from scores of detective agencies for an interview. To our utter disbelief, many declined blatantly and those few who agreed, were found to be ‘small enough’ to be categorized into a company. We were absolutely surprised to see so many small detective firms operating out of a single room with total lack of facilities or without any infrastructure in place.

Let alone modern facilities and equipments, most of them were lacking on basic tools to even enter in the sophisticated fray of detective services. Finally, to our respite, our team reached to a decent office, well-furnished, well-equipped and looking absolutely professional for its arrangement of men and machinery. The employees, both male and female, were sitting at their respective PC terminals, with their team heads sitting elaborately in the glass-coated and modern-looking cubicles. As we had reached some half an before the schedule, the spare time was spent analysing the company and comparing it from the rest we had been interviewing for the last two days in the city.

“Of course, yes! Our business is strong in urban centres like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore etc. than smaller places,” politely replied Mr. Naman Jain, director of Sleuths India Detectives, when asked about the question of city-based performance of private players. He went on further to elaborate: “The people in metro and big cities live in an environment where rampant cases of new-age crime is common and more so, being more liberal and receptive to changes, they don’t hesitate to call us (private players) for help.” The reply from the director of one India’s premier private detective agencies was pointing to the right aspects and hence, sounded utterly reasonable to us.

Delving deeper, the director also pointed out some important features of private players which, as per him, make them entirely different from the government-backed agencies. He said, “Law enforcement agencies lack the kind of modern-equipment and tools top players like we do have. Neither they offer customized services nor do they devote ample amount of time on cases. Sleuths India Detectives has dedicated resources and separate teams to handle cases of different nature and for that only, we are among the foremost names in the domain.” Fully satisfied and with all the needed ‘answers’ in sight, we concluded the session with a company whom many consider ‘second to none’ in the crowd of private detective agencies in India.