Ratan Khatri, as the obituaries tell it

This is a profile, not a market page. The draw, the pot and the cotton rate are in why it is called matka and in the full story. Kalyanji Bhagat is in the Kalyan and Worli chapter. What follows is the man, as three pieces opened in May 2020 describe him. Where they disagree, both sentences are kept.

Karachi, then Bombay, without a birth date

The Express Explained of 15 May 2020 says Rattan Khatri came to the city from Karachi following Partition. The Express report of 12 May 2020 says he came to Mumbai from Karachi after Partition, from a Sindhi family, and that an elder brother began by betting on numbers from the New York Cotton Exchange. The two of them, that report says, started Khatri Matka. The Times of India of 10 May 2020 says he was 88. An age of 88 in May 2020 is consistent with a birth around 1931 or 1932, and inconsistent with printing a birthday. No obituary opened here gives a day or a year of birth. This page does not invent one. It also does not call him a teenager, because that word was not in the copies used here.

The Explained says he died last Saturday, 9 May, at his South Mumbai home, after a brain stroke. The Times of India, dated 10 May, says he died on Saturday at his home near Tardeo. The 12 May Express says south Mumbai, a Saturday, a brain stroke, age 88. The place names are not identical. South Mumbai and near Tardeo can sit in one city without this page drawing a map. The racecourse line is the Times of India: he was a regular at Mahalaxmi, in white, studying the race book.

Cotton, then cards, in his words to the Times of India

The Times of India says the run began in the Mumbadevi business area, where people bet on cotton rates from the New York market. It quotes him. The New York markets five-day week sent compulsive betters looking for alternatives, which he provided. Close friends asked him to start his own syndicate. He drew three cards to decide the days number, twice a day, at 9pm and at midnight. The values were totalled. The number was relayed across the country and to people connected to him overseas. For a 25 paise bet, the returns were around Rs 2.25 or more. He said people had faith because he would ask them to open the three cards. He said he knew it was illegal and that he ran it with complete honesty. Illegal, there, is his word inside an interview. The statutes are in the legal guide. The Rs 2.25 is not a price anyone should copy.

The 12 May Express adds the pot, the mill workers, telephones, and a daily turnover it says went up to Rs 1 crore. It says he produced Rangeela Ratan, starring Rishi Kapoor, and played a guest role. The Explained quotes Kapoor autobiography Khullam Khulla on Rangila Ratan, with Parveen Babi, and on being asked to pick a card. A second Kapoor story, which the actor says he had heard, puts Khatri on a delayed flight from Bangalore and has the pilot call the control tower. Heard, in an autobiography, quoted in a paper, is two steps from a log. This page leaves it as that. It does not move the scene to Dubai. The Times of India says the number reached people overseas. It does not say the business shifted there.

Emergency, then 1993, or 1995

The Times of India says he spent 19 months in jail during the Emergency, and that a police crackdown in 1995 and the arrest that followed led him to give the business up. It says a paralytic attack came in 2001. The Express Explained says relations with Kalyanji Bhagat soured in the Emergency, in Vinod Bhagat account: Kalyanji stayed out of prison, Khatri did not, and Khatri thought he had not been helped. The same article says Khatri gave the business up in 1993. One version, from a source close to him, is a family trip toward London, a no-fly list at the airport, and embarrassment. Another, from Vivek Agarwal, with former DCP Ambadas Pote said to corroborate it, is a partnership with Borivali bookie Pappu Savla and a higher share offered to Arun Gawli gang. This page does not decide which year is the exit. A reader can hold 1993 and 1995 as two reports.

The Explained also says Kalyanji Bhagat died of a heart attack in 1992 and that his son Suresh took the business. The 12 May Express says, in one sentence, that Suresh Bhagat later ran it and was murdered. The crime narrative that follows in the Explained, with a 2008 crash and a 2013 conviction, is not retold here. It is not this mans death, and it is not needed to say who the obituaries are about. Former commissioner D. Sivanandan, in the Explained, says the empire went as far as the telephone wires, and that trunk calls were so heavy that calls were blocked so the number could go through. That is a police memory of the wires. It is not a map of franchises.

What a profile does not become

The Explained says a virtual version now exists and that, in Agarwal words, urban matka has moved online, while cricket betting overtook the old dens. No app is recommended. No result is forecast. The full story keeps the cotton-to-pot arc. This page keeps the person, and the disagreements, and stops.