Matka King Ratan Khatri Dies at the Age of 88

Ratan Khatri, known as the ‘Matka King’, died at the age of 88 at his house in Central Mumbai on Saturday.

Khatri ran a gambling network from the early 60s to mid 90s and dealt with crores of rupees in betting from thousands of punters across the nation. He established his illegal matka gambling business by taking bets on the fluctuation in the cotton rates transmitted from the New York Cotton Exchange. “But New York market’s five-day week schedule saw compulsive betters looking for alternatives which I provided them,” said Khatri, as per a report in Times of India.

As per Khatri, he was asked by close friends to start a syndicate of his own. This is when Khatri began drawing three cards to decide the day’s numbers. He would draw numbers from a matka (earthen pitcher) to announce the winning numbers. Later, this practice was replaced with drawing of three cards twice a day at 9:00 pm and midnight. The sum total of the drawn cards would determine the winning number. These numbers were circulated across all the related betting hubs in the nation and abroad.

Khatri earlier worked with Kalyanji Bhagat who started ‘Worli Matka’ in 1961. They later parted ways and Khatri started ‘Ratan Matka’. Khatri said the people had faith in his system and that he knew that the business was illegal, but he ran it with honesty.

Khatri belonged to a Sindhi family and moved to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan as a teenager during the partition in 1947.

Khatri spent 19 months in Jail during the 1975-77 emergency in India. He retired from the gambling business after the police crackdown on his business in 1995.

After retirement, Khatri was regularly spotted at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse, clad in a white Kurta Pyjama and a band on his head, studying the race book and betting on horses.