Rajani Pandit grew up in a middle class family in Palghar, Thane, Mumbai. Her father Shantaram Pandit was an inspector in the Criminal Investigation Department of Mumbai police. He worked on the assignation case of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. In The Times of India interview Pandit explains how her father’s not-caring attitude propelled her towards the career of a detective.
Those days in India if someone had a problem and they would never go to the police station, as Indian police then and even today is corrupt to their core. People would seek-out someone they knew via their friend or relative or acquaintance. As her father was a policeman, people from their neighborhood would come to him for unofficial help. Her father would not help them because they had no concrete evidence. He didn’t understand that because they didn’t have a concrete evidence was the reason people were coming to him unofficially.
Pandit remembers her father’s nonchalant attitude to not helping others. She would take that her natural curiosity to become India’s first female detective and even at forty-nine work as a private investigator.
The First Detectives 