If a recovery agent knocks at your door you don’t have to hide in your house or avoid them by asking one of your family members to speak to them. They cannot harm you or force you to pay the outstanding at all.
The RBI has issued strict guidelines to protect the interest of the borrower and to stop unethical practices of recovery agents. You will find here the RBI guidelines towards recovery agents: how agents should approach, the time they can visit, and how they should behave.

Approach of Recovery Agents
The RBI states: “To ensure due notice and appropriate authorization by the banks, they should inform the borrower the details of recovery agents engaged for the purpose, while forwarding default cases to the recovery agents. The details should include their telephone numbers, etc. The recovery agents should call the borrowers only from telephone numbers notified to the borrower.”
This clearly indicates that if any recovery agent approaches you without following the above guidelines you should not entertain them and if they try to harass you, you can make a complaint to the police and also to the Banking Ombudsman. The bank also has the responsibility to keep the borrower informed in case the bank has changed the recovery agent. “Where the recovery agency is changed by the bank during the recovery process, in addition to the bank notifying the borrower of the change, the new agent should carry the notice and the authorization letter along with his identity card.” - the RBI guideline states.

Time of Call
The recovery agents are allowed to call the borrower only between 7 am to 7 pm. It’s as per the Code of Bank’s Commitment to Customers which banks have to abide by. In addition, visits are strictly prohibited by the code in the case of bereavement in the family or calamitous occasions - “Inappropriate occasions such as bereavement in the family or other calamitous occasion the family would be avoided for making calls visits to collect dues.”

Behavior of Recovery Agents
The recovery agents are not allowed under any circumstances to thrash the borrower or speak indecently. If the borrower does not to want to speak to the agent, the agents have to obey. “The bank and their agents should not resort to intimidation or harassment of any kind, either verbal or physical, against any person in their debt collection efforts, including acts intended to humiliate publicly or intrude the privacy of the debtors’ family members, referees and friends, making threatening and anonymous calls or making false and misleading representations.” - states the RBI.

An important point here is to note that in case you have already lodged a complaint for any of your grievances, banks cannot send recovery agents for that specific issue. The RBI states “Where a grievance/complaint has been lodged, banks should not forward cases to recovery agencies till they have finally disposed of any grievance/complaint lodged by the concerned borrower.”