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REAL STORY behind Vijay Varma’s Matka King When a crime drama arrives promising the story of the man who turned a road- side laying practice into one of India’s biggest underground conglomerates, curiosity is ineluctable. That's precisely the conspiracy around Vijay Varma’s rearmost series Matka King, where the actor plays Brij Bhatti — a fictionalised character extensively understood to be inspired by the real- life “ Matka King ” of Mumbai, Ratan Khatri. While the show stops short of directly naming him, the parallels are unmistakable. From the rise of organised matka gambling in 1960s Bombay to the metamorphosis of a modest laying system into a civil miracle, the series draws heavily from the extraordinary and controversial life of the man who came a legend in India’s gambling demiworld. Directed by Nagraj Manjule and backed by Prime Video, the series revisits an period when matka moved from shop composites and cloth capitals into delineation apartments of the rich, the film assiduity, and indeed political circles. At the centre of that world was Ratan Khatri — a businessman whose name came synonymous with India’s illegal laying frugality for decades.
