MVC Model Binding to a collection where collection does not begin with a 0 index

You could write a custom model binder:

public class ImeiNumberModelBinder : IModelBinder
{
    public object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext)
    {
        var modelName = bindingContext.ModelName;
        var request = controllerContext.HttpContext.Request;
        var paramName = request
            .Params
            .Keys
            .Cast<string>()
            .FirstOrDefault(
                x => x.EndsWith(modelName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)
            );

        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(paramName))
        {
            return bindingContext
                .ValueProvider
                .GetValue(request[paramName])
                .AttemptedValue;
        }

        return null;
    }
}

and then apply it to the controller action:

public ActionResult IsImeiAvailable(
    [ModelBinder(typeof(ImeiNumberModelBinder))] string imeiNumber
)
{
    return Json(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(imeiNumber), JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

Now the ImeiGadgets[xxx] part will be ignored from the query string.