Matka is one of the most searched gambling words in India and one of the least understood. This is the documented story of how a habit of betting on cotton prices became a citywide numbers game, why it faded, and why its name still circulates online.
This page is history, not a how-to. MatkaLottery.com does not run, promote or explain how to play matka, and does not publish results or numbers. Matka (also called satta) is illegal gambling in India.
Before matka: betting on cotton rates
Before Independence, people in Bombay bet on the opening and closing prices of cotton, which were relayed by teleprinter from the New York Cotton Exchange to the Bombay Cotton Exchange. The practice was known as ankada jugar, roughly “figures gambling”. It needed no cards and no board, only a number that nobody in the city could control.
In 1961 the New York Cotton Exchange stopped the practice that had supplied those rates. The people running the books needed a new source of random numbers, and the next decade answered that need.
Worli, 1962: Kalyanji Bhagat
Kalyanji Bhagat, a migrant from Kutch, reached Bombay in 1941 and ran a grocery shop in Worli. In 1962 he started what became known as Worli matka, at first taking bets keyed to cotton rates. The business stayed in the family: after his death in the early 1990s, his son Suresh Bhagat took it over.
Ratan Khatri and the pot that named the game
Ratan Khatri was born around 1932 into a Sindhi family in Karachi and moved to Bombay after Partition in 1947. As a teenager working in the city’s textile markets he was drawn into cotton-rate betting, and in the early 1960s he set up his own syndicate.
His change was theatrical and simple: the winning numbers came from playing cards or chits drawn out of an earthen pot — a matka — in front of onlookers. The public draw gave the game a reputation for fairness and gave it the name that has stuck ever since. Khatri’s operation became the best known in the city and earned him the title “Matka King”.
Khatri was jailed for about 19 months during the Emergency (1975–77). He withdrew from the business in the early 1990s, later worked in film financing and distribution, and died at his home in South Mumbai in May 2020, aged 88.
The peak, and the crackdown
Through the 1980s and 1990s matka spread across Bombay’s mills, markets and chawls, and then to other cities. Monthly betting was reported to exceed ₹500 crore at its peak. Sustained police action in the 1990s changed that. Dens moved to the city’s edges and to other states, many players drifted to cricket betting, and the number of bookies in the city reportedly fell from more than 2,000 in 1995 to fewer than 300.
Why it hurt the people who played
Matka’s customers were mostly working people betting small sums often. The structure worked against them in three ways:
- The payout was always lower than the real odds. Like every banked game, the operator kept a margin on every bet, so the more often someone played, the more certainly they lost.
- There was no regulator. Disputes were settled by the operator, debts were chased informally, and nothing protected a player who was cheated.
- It attracted crime. Accounts of the 1990s describe police pressure, gang involvement and internal feuds around the business.
Matka today: the same illegality on new screens
The name survives through websites, apps and messaging groups that publish so-called results, charts and “guessing” forums. They operate outside the law, they offer players no protection, and they are a magnet for fraud: “fix number” sellers take a fee for a “leaked” result and disappear. Since August 2025 the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act has banned online money games and their advertising outright. Read what the law says and how the fix-number scam works.
Matka on screen
Popular culture keeps returning to the story. The 1975 Hindi film Dharmatma drew on Khatri’s life; the 2024 Telugu film Matka and the 2026 Hindi series Matka King brought the era back to a new audience. Dramatisations take liberties — this page sticks to the documented record.
Key dates
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| Before 1947 | Ankada jugar: bets on New York cotton rates relayed to Bombay |
| 1961 | New York Cotton Exchange stops the practice |
| 1962 | Kalyanji Bhagat starts Worli matka |
| Early 1960s | Ratan Khatri starts his own syndicate with public draws from a pot |
| 1975–77 | Khatri jailed during the Emergency |
| 1980s–90s | Peak years; monthly betting reported above ₹500 crore |
| 1990s | Police crackdowns; city bookies fall from 2,000+ to under 300 |
| May 2020 | Ratan Khatri dies in Mumbai, aged 88 |
| August 2025 | Online Gaming Act bans online money games nationwide |
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Common questions
Why is it called matka?
Matka means an earthen pot. In the 1960s the numbers were drawn from such a pot in public, and the name stuck to the whole game.
Who was the original “Matka King”?
The title is most associated with Ratan Khatri, who ran the best-known syndicate in Bombay from the 1960s to the early 1990s.
Is matka legal now?
No. It is illegal gambling in every Indian state, online or offline. See our legal guide.
Sources
- Matka gambling, Wikipedia
- Ratan Khatri, Wikipedia
- Indian Parliament passes law banning all online money games, Mondaq