How matka business started

The matka business in Mumbai and neighbouring areas had for long been synonymous with Rattan Khatri, a Sindhi who migrated to Mumbai from Karachi after Partition.

In those days, Khatri and other punters would bet on the opening and closing rates of cotton transmitted to the Bombay Cotton Exchange in Sewree by the New York Cotton Exchange via tele-printers.

But in 1961, the New York Cotton Exchange stopped the practice, leaving regular punters high and dry.

Khatri floated a novel idea of declaring opening and closing rates of imaginary products. Numbers would be written in pieces of paper and put in a big pitcher (matka).

One person would then draw a chit and declare the winning numbers. Over the years, the practice changed — three numbers were drawn from a pack of playing cards. But the name matka got stuck to gambling.

When the textile mills flourished in Mumbai, lakhs of mill workers got attracted to matka and scores of bookies opened shops near the mills. That is how Central Mumbai became the hub of the gambling business.

At the height of the matka business in the 1980s and 1990s, over Rs500 crore would be laid as bet every month. But the crackdown by the police after 1995 dealt a serious blow to the business.

Till 1995, there used to be more than 2,000 big and medium-time bookies in the city and neighbouring towns, but now the number has reduced to below 300, the sources said.

For the last few years the average monthly turnover has remained around Rs100 crore. The arrest of Savla and the death of Bhagat are likely to diminish it further, police sources said.