History of Satta King and Matka

Much of what is written online about the history of Satta King is copied from one results site to another, with dates and founders that nobody can trace. This guide keeps only what newspapers, dictionaries and official records support. Where sources disagree, both versions are shown; where something is only folklore, it is labelled as such.

Before the games: "satta" as a trading word

The word came first. Platts' Urdu, Hindi and English dictionary of 1884 defines सट्टा (saṭṭā) as "a mercantile transaction; a contract or engagement, a written agreement, a bond; a market". It belonged to the vocabulary of traders. Speculating on the future price of goods, and later betting on prices or figures, took over the word in modern usage. Old Delhi had its own tradition of commodity speculation: Outlook described satta brokers working beside futures traders in edible oils and jaggery around Fatehpuri, although that account (a single source) is about betting on cricket, politics and films, not on number games. Before Partition, betting on cotton figures in Bombay was reportedly known as ankada jugar, "figures gambling"; only Wikipedia and one Hindi news site mention the term.

1950s: betting on New York cotton rates

The documented story begins in Bombay. According to DNA (2013), Business Today (2021) and the Press Trust of India, people in the 1950s placed bets on the opening and closing rates of cotton, which were sent by teleprinter from the New York Cotton Exchange to the Bombay Cotton Exchange. The account is repeated by several outlets, but most of them trace back to the same press reports; no exchange record from the time has been found.

The link ended around 1961. DNA and Business Today say the New York Cotton Exchange "halted the practice in 1961"; some later pages say 1962. What exactly "halted" meant in exchange terms is not recorded.

1961–64: from cotton rates to the matka draw

With no cotton rates to bet on, organisers needed a new source of numbers. Press accounts say they began to draw numbers themselves. Numbers were written on slips of paper and placed in a matka, an earthen pot (मटका), and a slip was drawn. Later, numbers were drawn from playing cards instead, but the name "matka" stayed.

Kalyanji Bhagat and Worli Matka (1962)

Kalyanji Bhagat, a trader from Kutch who ran a grocery shop in Worli, is credited with starting Worli Matka in 1962. PTI dates the start of matka in Mumbai to the same year. Wikipedia says his game ran seven days a week (single source). Many websites assume that "Kalyan Matka" is named after him; we found no reliable source for that, and no reliable date for his death.

Ratan Khatri's matka (1962 or 1964: why sources differ)

Ratan Khatri was born around 1932 into a Sindhi family from Karachi and came to Bombay as a teenager at Partition. He worked with Bhagat on Worli Matka and then started his own game. Sources disagree on the year: Wikipedia's article on matka gambling gives 1964 for his "New Worli" matka, while its article on Khatri gives 1962. The safest statement is "in the early 1960s". The press credits him with the pot-and-slip draw and the later use of cards, and PTI reported that his business turned over about ₹1 crore a day at its height. He was widely called the "Matka King". He reportedly retired in the 1990s and died in Mumbai on 9 May 2020, aged 88.

The mill years and the peak (1960s–1990s)

Matka spread quickly in 1960s Bombay. Textile-mill workers were among the main punters, and betting dens grew up near the mills, making Parel in central Mumbai and Kalbadevi into hubs (DNA 2013). Khatri was reportedly jailed for about 19 months during the Emergency of 1975–77; that detail comes from Wikipedia and entertainment profiles, not from the PTI obituary.

How big was it? Two estimates, ten times apart

Figures for the peak in the 1980s and 1990s differ by a factor of ten. DNA reported that more than ₹500 crore a month was bet; Business Today put it at ₹50 crore a month. Estimates range from ₹50 crore to over ₹500 crore a month, and neither source shows its working, so no single figure should be treated as fact.

The 1990s crackdown and the move out of Mumbai

As the business grew, so did police pressure. DNA wrote that the crackdown after 1995 "dealt a serious blow" to the business, and Business Today also describes a heavy police crackdown. Operators reportedly moved to the city's outskirts and to Gujarat and Rajasthan, and some punters moved to lotteries and cricket betting (single source). According to DNA, Mumbai had more than 2,000 big and medium bookies before 1995 and fewer than 300 by 2013.

North India: Gali, Desawar and the Delhi-NCR games

What is documented

Very little. No reliable published history of the North Indian games exists. NPG News, a Hindi news site, wrote in 2025 that there is no official record of the game's history because it is illegal. What can be said is limited:

• The names are documented as words. Gali means a lane, and disawar means a foreign country or an outside market (Platts). Other games carry the names of cities, such as Faridabad and Ghaziabad, or devotional names. See Gali and Desawar: what the names mean and where the game names come from.
• By the 2000s, games such as Desawar, Gali, Faridabad and Ghaziabad were well known in Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, but no documented start date exists for any of them.
• Police reports regularly describe satta raids in Delhi-NCR and western UP, and the press uses "Satta King" for alleged operators, as in a 2022 Meerut raid and the September 2025 arrest of a man described as Delhi's "Satta King".

Our own record is narrower still: our charts start in January 2015, the earliest year for which we hold a complete daily record.

What is folklore (and why we do not repeat it)

Many websites say that Satta King began in Delhi in a particular year, that Gali started in a lane of Old Delhi, or that "Satta King" once meant the day's winner. We found no source for any of these. Business Today's 2021 claim that "online Satta Matka is legal" is wrong today: online money games have been banned since 1 May 2026. We leave these stories out rather than repeat them as history.

Online: websites, WhatsApp and apps (2000s–2020s)

From the 2000s, results moved to websites and later to WhatsApp and Telegram groups (Business Today; NPG News). Betting moved online too, through apps and UPI wallets, and so did enforcement. In January 2024 the Enforcement Directorate provisionally attached about ₹8.89 crore under the money-laundering law in an online satta matka app case, in which deposits were reportedly routed through bank accounts opened in other people's names. In March 2026 the government said its latest blocking wave included "satta and matka gambling networks". Scams grew alongside: see "leak" and "fix" number scams.

The law through the years

For what these laws mean today, read Is Satta King legal in India?

In films and series

• Dharmatma (1975, directed by Feroz Khan): a character was reportedly modelled on Ratan Khatri.
• Matka (Telugu, released 14 November 2024): reportedly inspired by Khatri, though the link was not officially confirmed.
• Matka King (Prime Video series, premiered 17 April 2026): set in 1960s Bombay, about a cotton trader who introduces matka; widely described as inspired by Khatri and Bhagat. It is drama, not a documentary.

We found no notable film or song titled "Satta King".

What the historical record does not tell us

The documented history is almost entirely about Bombay matka between the 1950s and the 1990s, and even that rests mostly on newspaper accounts and a few obituaries. Nobody has published a sourced account of when or by whom Gali, Desawar or the other North Indian games were started, how the name "Satta King" spread, or how large the games are today. Any website that gives exact founding dates for them is repeating folklore. When better sources appear, we will update this page and say what changed.