OBJECTIVES: To translate and culturally adapt six self-report measures for depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and somatic symptom disorder into Hindi and determine their diagnostic accuracy against a diagnostic clinical interview. DESIGN: Cross-sectional validation study. SETTING: Rural Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, northern India. PARTICIPANTS: 480 perinatal (pregnant or within 12 months postpartum) and non-perinatal (not currently pregnant and not given birth within 12 months) women at one tertiary hospital and district-level Anganwadi (community health) centres. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Symptom endorsement; and discriminant validity, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of the Kessler Scale of Psychological Distress (K10), Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ9), Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), Generalised Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD7), Perinatal Anxiety Screening Scale (PASS), PTSD Checklist (PCL-5) and Scale for the Assessment of Somatic Symptoms (SASS). RESULTS: Complete data were available for 443 participants. Tiredness and body weakness were the most commonly endorsed symptoms among participants with common mental disorders. Among perinatal participants, the AUROC was highest for the GAD7 (0.88, 95% CI 0.79 to 0.96) and SASS (0.84, 95% CI 0.71 to 0.96). Among non-perinatal participants, the AUROC was highest for the SASS (0.92, 95% CI 0.88 to 0.97) and PHQ9 (0.91, 95% CI 0.86 to 0.96). CONCLUSIONS: Measures which assess for fatigue, tiredness and somatic symptoms may help to identify women experiencing common mental disorders in this setting. Small numbers of participants with clinically diagnosed mental disorders in our sample mean results must be interpreted cautiously. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05485701.