Raja D King Offers an iPhone Langar With a Guest List

Rakesh Trehan will give away 10 iPhones in Chandigarh on September 22, four days after Apple began selling the iPhone 18 Pro. He calls the event an iPhone langar. The sets on offer are iPhone 17 models, about ₹99,900 on Apple’s India shop, handed as prasad after a public draw for residents of Chandigarh and Mohali.

The first group chasing those 10 phones is supposed to number 1,000. The daily password is “Jai Mata Di” in a WhatsApp chat. Trehan, an Amritsar trader known as Raja D King, says there is no bias in the room. The rules still read like a raffle with a hymn attached.

The Draw Is Set for Noon in Sector 10

Trehan locked the date on Friday, September 18, the morning iPhone 18 Pro sales opened in India. He said Mata Rani gave him September 22, sooner than the 5 to 7 days, or the 10 or 15, he had expected after September 21. The handout runs from 12 pm to 2 pm at the same Chandigarh spot where he tried a petrol coupon drop in August, a Sector 10 pump that never finished the job.

He recorded the invitation on camera and asked the press to come. Previous supporters are welcome too. Names, he said, will be drawn in front of everyone, and the lucky people of Chandigarh and Mohali will receive the phones live.

VIDEO | Chandigarh: On organising a langar of iPhones on September 22, Raja D King says, "…On September 22, the distribution will begin live here at this very place, in front of everyone. All media are invited. Everyone we invite will be welcome. Those who have come here… pic.twitter.com/PGzYhqHlAx

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) September 18, 2026

In that clip he repeats the open-door line, then narrows the door. Only people from those two cities are in the first cut. Everyone else waits for a later list of Punjab towns, which he says he will read out on September 22 itself.

Why the iPhone 16 Was Cut

Trehan dropped the iPhone 16 after first saying any recent model could go out, except the older 11 through 15 series. He told a Chandigarh camera that a 16 would still make someone glad, and then make them ask why the person beside them got a 17. So the 16 was cancelled. The giveaway starts with the iPhone 17, which he priced at around ₹1 lakh.

If someone gets an iPhone 16, they will be happy, but they will also say, ‘Jai Mata Di, why didn’t I get a 17 when the person next to me got a 17?’ So, the 16 was also cancelled… only the iPhone 17 will be given. It will start with the iPhone 17, which costs around ₹1 lakh.

Rakesh Trehan, Raja D King, speaking in Chandigarh

His round number is close. Apple’s India store has the iPhone 17 now listed at ₹99,900 for 256 GB, up ₹17,000 from the ₹82,900 launch tag. The 512 GB model is ₹1,24,900. He also said a dealer in Amritsar’s Liberty Market already took an order for a hundred phones, with the 16 struck from that list.

The timing is the other half of the product joke. Queues formed in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Noida on September 18 as the iPhone 18 Pro starts at ₹1,64,900. Trehan is not putting that phone on the thali. He is giving last year’s flagship, freshly repriced to sit just under a lakh, while the new Pro is in shops.

WHAT THE PHONES COST

Ten iPhone 17 sets at the 256 GB shop price come to ₹9,99,000. That is the Tuesday pile if every winner gets the base 17. The hundred-phone order he described would sit near ₹1 crore at the same sticker, and that order is still his claim, not a counted stack on a table.

Ten Winners From a Thousand Names

The first chat, Trehan said, holds about 1,000 people. Ten phones go out on September 22. That is one winner in a hundred if the group is full and every member stayed eligible. He had earlier talked about 100 phones in Chandigarh and 200 in Mohali, and about 1,000 across a longer run. Tuesday is the small public proof, not that larger ledger.

THE WHATSAPP RULES

• The cities: First winners must be from Chandigarh or Mohali.
• The group: Join the chat of about 1,000 people, then wait for a call if selected.
• The chant: Type “Jai Mata Di” once a day until a phone arrives.
• The makeup: Miss a day, write it twice the next day, or leave the pool.
• The draw: Names come off the list in front of cameras, noon to 2 pm on September 22.

He said the typing will be watched. Fail the line, and the iPhone is gone. Winners get a phone call. Hindi news packages on September 19 were already selling a 1,000-phone langar as if that were the Tuesday count. The figure he keeps using for the first afternoon is 10.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The slot: September 22, 12 pm to 2 pm, Chandigarh, same ground as the petrol attempt.
• The haul: 10 iPhones that afternoon, iPhone 17 and newer, no iPhone 16.
• The filter: Chandigarh and Mohali first, daily “Jai Mata Di” in WhatsApp.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The hundred: Whether the Liberty Market order of 100 iPhone 17s is paid, packed, and bound for later dates.
• The thousand: Whether the long-run figure of about 1,000 phones ever leaves the speech.
• The crowd: Whether Sector 10 stays orderly after the August petrol crush.

He has said he will move slowly so the giveaway is not misused. Slow, in this plan, still means a watched chat and a camera line, not an open hall.

Langar at Amritsar Does Not Check WhatsApp

Trehan is from Amritsar, a city whose most famous kitchen does the opposite of this. At Sri Darbar Sahib, the Golden Temple, langar is a shared vegetarian meal. Guru Nanak set the practice; later Gurus made it a fixture of gurdwara life. You sit on the floor in a row. You eat the same dal and roti as the stranger beside you. There is no city test, no daily password, and no draw.

Temple pages describe free meals served to everyone regardless of religion, caste, nationality or standing, more than 50,000 a day, and more than 100,000 on big gurpurabs. Volunteers cook and wash. Donations keep the pots on. The point of the row on the floor is that nobody is lucky and nobody is special.

Trehan uses the same Punjabi word, then adds prasad, Mata Rani, a guest list, and a phone worth a lakh. He also says there are no favourites. The mechanics do the sorting his sentence denies. A langar feeds whoever walks in. A WhatsApp raffle feeds whoever typed on time and whose name stopped under a finger on a screen.

The Petrol Pump Closed Before the Coupons Landed

Chandigarh has already stood in one of his queues. In August he announced a petrol langar: ₹500 fuel coupons for two-wheelers and three-wheelers, ₹1,000 for four-wheelers, at pumps in Sector 7 and Sector 10 from 5 pm on August 18. Heavy rain hit. He said he would shift the drop so people were not stuck in the wet, then talk of a three-day window through Sunday.

People still came. A large crowd gathered at the Sector 10 station on the original Tuesday evening. Some who waited for hours said no coupons were handed over. Police stepped in. The pump was shut for a time. The iPhone plan, first floated that same month, is the sequel he chose after fuel did not leave the forecourt.

THE DATES HE HAS USED

1. August 2026: Announces an iPhone langar for Chandigarh and Mohali.
2. August 18, 2026: Postpones the petrol coupon drop after rain; a crowd still forms at Sector 10.
3. September 12, 2026: Pre-orders open in India for the iPhone 18 Pro.
4. September 18, 2026: iPhone 18 Pro goes on sale at 8 am; Trehan fixes September 22 as the phone draw.
5. September 22, 2026: Public draw of 10 iPhones, noon to 2 pm; 10 more Punjab cities to be named.
6. The 5th: He says he will announce the next date, then another 15 days and 15 cities.

The petrol afternoon is why the iPhone event is being staged as a closed-room draw with invited cameras. A pump forecourt taught him, and the city, what an unfiltered crowd does when a free good is on the table.

He Says Mata Rani Picked the Date

Trehan has described himself as a crypto trader who used inherited money to invest. He has also run cash and food giveaways, including ₹500 notes outside a temple. The iPhone run is the one that pulled national cameras, because the object is a status phone and the word is langar.

He frames the whole chain as devotion. He said he gave up everything that was his and wanted to know who Jai Mata Di is, “the source of everything we receive.” The September 22 slot, in that telling, is not a marketing calendar. It is an instruction. The phones are prasad. The winners are whoever she chooses, provided they live in the right towns and kept typing.

So from September 22, you will see such langars being organised as guided by ‘Jai Mata Di’. It starts September 22, between 12 PM and 2 PM, where iPhones will be given as prasad to whichever lucky humans ‘Jai Mata Di’ chooses, to the residents of Chandigarh and Mohali.

Rakesh Trehan, Raja D King, speaking in Chandigarh

He compared the response with his older stunts and said he had never seen curiosity like this for iPhones. That part is easy to believe. A free 17, even last year’s 17, is a louder magnet than a ₹500 petrol slip. It is also louder than the fine print of 10 sets and a monitored chant, which is why the 1,000-phone version of the story is the one travelling in clips.

Ten More Cities Are Due After the Draw

On September 22, after the 10 phones, Trehan says he will read out 10 more Punjab cities. Zirakpur and Panchkula have been named in local talk as later stops, but the list he has promised on camera is the one he will speak that afternoon. He then wants a date on the 5th, another 15 days, 15 cities, and, in his last flourish, the entire world.

People in those later towns, he said, will get time to join a group and complete the typing before their draw. The first afternoon is the template: a room, a live list, a small number of boxes, and a much larger chat that goes home without a phone.

If the 10 iPhone 17s come out of their wraps in front of the cameras, 10 households in Chandigarh and Mohali will have a new handset they did not buy. The rest of the 1,000 will have a hymn in a group chat. That is the event as he has described it, two days before it is due to start, and four days after Apple began selling a dearer phone he is not giving away.