He left Kainchi on a Sunday afternoon in September 1973 and never came back. The last journey through Agra and Mathura, what is known about the cause, his last words, the samadhi in Vrindavan, where his ashes went, and when the punyatithi is kept.
The short answer: Neem Karoli Baba died in the early hours of Tuesday 11 September 1973 at the Ramakrishna Mission hospital in Vrindavan, an hour or so after he collapsed on the steps of Mathura railway station on his way back to Kainchi. He was most likely 73. A heart test in Agra the day before had come back normal, and his biographers give the cause as a diabetic coma; no medical record of his death has been published. He was cremated the same day inside his own ashram in Vrindavan, and his samadhi mandir stands on that spot, on Parikrama Marg. A kalash of his ashes lies under the marble murti at Kainchi Dham, installed on 15 June 1976, and his elder son’s family has kept another portion in Bhopal ever since. His punyatithi is 11 September by the English calendar, while the big bhandara at the Vrindavan ashram follows the Hindu date of the cremation, Anant Chaturdashi, which in 2026 fell on 25 September.
By Deepa Pant, Contributor, Haldwani. About the author ↓
Since the film Hanuman Ansh came out in August 2026, the question we hear most often after “Who was his family?” is “How did he die?” The film ends long before 1973, so the end of the story is missing for many people who first met him in a cinema. This page tells it in order, from the last days at Kainchi to the samadhi in Vrindavan, and keeps the devotees’ memories apart from what can be checked. For the rest of his life, read the story of Neem Karoli Baba, and for the wife, children and grandchildren who outlived him, our page on his family.
| Question | What the record says |
|---|---|
| When he died | Early hours of Tuesday 11 September 1973, the night of 10 September |
| Time | About 1 AM in his companion’s account, about 1:15 AM in the Kainchi trust’s |
| Where | Ramakrishna Mission hospital, Vrindavan, Mathura district |
| Hindu date | Anant Chaturdashi, the fourteenth day of the bright half of Bhadrapada |
| Age | Most likely 73; the birth year usually given is 1900 |
| Cause | A diabetic coma, according to his biographers; an ECG in Agra the day before was normal |
| Cremation | The same day, on a sandalwood pyre inside his Vrindavan ashram |
| Samadhi | The samadhi mandir in the Vrindavan ashram on Parikrama Marg |
| Ashes | A kalash under his murti at Kainchi Dham, portions in sacred rivers, a portion kept by the family in Bhopal |
| Punyatithi | 11 September; the Vrindavan bhandara follows Anant Chaturdashi |
Almost everything about his last three days comes from one witness. Ravi Khanna, a young devotee who travelled with him, dictated an account on 13 November 1973, two months after the death. The temple trust at Kainchi and the Neem Karoli Baba ashram in Taos, New Mexico, add a few details of their own. Ravi Khanna’s opening line has one date wrong, so, as on our story page, we follow his days of the week, which fit the calendar.
In the account his companions left, the last weekend at Kainchi is full of remarks that read, in hindsight, like a man saying goodbye. On the Saturday, 8 September, a group of Western devotees was singing outside his room when he looked up, said that Neem Karoli Baba had died and gone up, and pointed at the sky. When a visitor asked for a private word, he said there was no time, and when the man offered to come back the next morning, he answered, “If I’m still alive in the afternoon.” That evening a local doctor examined him and gave him a tablet for his heart.
On Sunday 9 September he gave darshan in the morning and told some people he would be going in four or five days. He had the devotees sing the Hanuman Chalisa and other prayers, and his eyes filled with tears. The women of the ashram, the Mas, performed an aarti and put a tilak on his forehead, and for once he did not wipe it off. At about half past two he had the cooking stopped, sent the Mas back to Nainital, bowed at the Hanuman temple and the other shrines, and got into a waiting car without a word to anyone.
The trust adds a detail of its own. In the notebook where he wrote Ram’s name every day, he filled the page for 9 September and the page for 10 September, dated the page for 11 September and left it blank, and handed the notebook to Siddhi Ma, the devotee who would look after his Kumaon ashrams for the next four decades. Devotees read all of this as proof that he knew. We give it as his companions recorded it.
Ravi Khanna does not name the station where they boarded, only that they bought tickets for Agra and travelled overnight. Baba did not sleep. He asked Ravi to stay up and talk, and spent the night speaking about people and sadhus he had known.
In Agra on Monday 10 September he was, by Ravi’s account, in high spirits. He refused a rickshaw driver who asked three rupees and took the next one at two and a half, saying that was the right price. He spent most of the day at the house of a devotee, a city engineer named Sharma, eating only vegetables, since he had taken no grain for three or four days. Once, for less than an hour, he went out with his younger son, Dharm Narayan Sharma, to see the head of the medical college. The ECG was normal. The doctor advised rest, and Baba laughed.
At nine that evening the three of them boarded a first-class compartment for Kathgodam, the station at the foot of the hills below Kainchi. He was going home.
He did not get there. Baba asked Ravi to sit in the next compartment, where the other passengers took the young man for a thief, pulled the emergency chain and handed him to the police, who roughed him up until someone thought to ask the old man in the blanket. Baba was upset that they had beaten “my son”, and changed the plan on the spot: they would get off at Mathura and go to Vrindavan instead.
They reached Mathura at about half past eleven or midnight. Several people on the platform recognised him and bowed. He sat on the station steps and sent his son for a taxi, then lay down and closed his eyes, and began to tremble. When Ravi looked at him, his eyes were open but he did not seem to know anyone. He said he felt hot and asked to be fanned, though his clothes were soaked and his skin was cold to the touch. He asked for water, said the lights were too bright, and then told them to take him to a doctor.
They carried him on a station stretcher to a taxi, and his son fanned him on the drive of about six miles to the Ramakrishna Mission hospital in Vrindavan. The staff gave him two injections and put an oxygen mask on him. Twice he pulled it off, saying it was useless. He asked for water.
The accounts of his last words differ a little. Ravi Khanna says he said “Ram, Ram” and closed his eyes for the last time at about 1 AM. The Kainchi trust says he repeated the words Jagdish Hare, Lord of the universe, and gives the time as about 1:15 AM. Either way it was the early hours of Tuesday 11 September 1973, Anant Chaturdashi. The Taos ashram describes it as the night of 10 September; it is the same night.
Ravi and Dharm Narayan carried him back to the taxi and drove to the Hanuman temple of his own ashram in Vrindavan, where they laid him on his bed and sent telegrams to devotees across India.
No death certificate or hospital record has been published, so the honest answer is that we know the symptoms better than the diagnosis. A local doctor gave him a heart tablet at Kainchi on the Saturday. The ECG in Agra on the Monday was normal. At Mathura he trembled, sweated and went cold, and lost track of the people around him. His biographers give the cause as a diabetic coma, and that is the explanation most books repeat. We have not added a diagnosis of our own.
Devotees see it differently: that he chose the time. The Taos ashram writes that he had fixed the date in advance and picked the place of his cremation himself, and that in March and April 1973, during Chaitra Navratri, he had a devotee from Aligarh perform a nine-day yajna in Vrindavan. When the saint Devraha Baba heard the news, the Kainchi trust records, he said Maharaj-ji had played this kind of trick many times before.
Most likely 73. The year of his birth usually given, by the trust and in most books, is 1900, in Akbarpur near Tundla, now in Firozabad district. No document from the time settles it, so you will also see him described as about 75 or simply “in his seventies”. By the time of his death he had been known as Neem Karoli Baba for decades and had lived at Kainchi, on and off, since its temple opened in 1964.
He was cremated on the day he died, 11 September 1973, Anant Chaturdashi, on a sandalwood pyre inside the grounds of his Vrindavan ashram. The Taos ashram says the devotees built the pyre on the guidance of another saint of the town, Pagal Baba. A samadhi mandir was later built on the exact spot. Its design deliberately borrows from the temple, the mosque, the church, the gurdwara and the pagoda, which the ashram explains as a sign that he belonged to everyone.
The ashram itself was older than his death by six years: its first temple opened in 1967. It stands on Parikrama Marg, a short way off the Mathura road, and Google Maps lists it as Shri Neeb Karori Baba Samadhi, on Baba Neem Karori Marg near Atalla Chungi. Besides the samadhi mandir there are temples to Hanuman, Durga, Sita and Ram, and Shiva. The Taos ashram notes that some foreign devotees are allowed to stay there with a letter of introduction arranged in advance. We could not find opening hours published by the ashram itself.
His ashes did not stay in one place. A kalash was taken to Kainchi, where it lies under his murti. Aaj Tak, in a report of 31 August 2026, says portions were immersed in eleven sacred rivers across India. And his elder son, Anek Singh Sharma, took a portion home to Bhopal, where the family has kept it for fifty-three years. His grandson, Dr Dhananjay Sharma, told Aaj Tak that the family plans to enshrine it in an ashram in Baba’s name in Bhopal; the land, he has said elsewhere, is near Ratibad. Our page on Neem Karoli Baba’s family has more on him and on the family trust.
Kainchi was where he had spent most of his last years, and the devotees there decided within a year of his death to build a small samadhi temple over the kalash of his ashes. The trust says construction began in 1975; the Taos ashram and Amar Ujala give 1974. Both agree on the day it was finished. His marble murti, carved in Jaipur, was installed on 15 June 1976, the anniversary of the temple’s consecration, and it is the blanket-wrapped figure that pilgrims bow to today.
So there are two places people mean by “his samadhi”. The cremation ground and samadhi mandir are in Vrindavan; the shrine over his ashes, and the place most of his devotees visit, is at Kainchi Dham, 17 km from Nainital. Photography is not allowed inside the Kainchi temple, which is one reason so few pictures of the shrine are around; our page on the Kainchi Dham rules on dress and photography explains what is and is not allowed.
No. He died in Vrindavan on 11 September 1973, more than fifty-three years ago. The question comes up because devotees so often speak of him in the present tense, as Maharaj-ji who is still with them, and because many people now searching for him met him first in a 2026 film. When people talk of a “live darshan” of Neem Karoli Baba today, they mean darshan of his murti at Kainchi or at one of his other temples.
By the English calendar the punyatithi is 11 September, and that is the date the Hindi press marks; Patrika ran its piece on the fifty-third punyatithi on 11 September 2026. The Vrindavan ashram’s own observance is the mahasamadhi bhandara, which the Taos ashram says is held there every September. In 2026 the big day was Friday 25 September, Anant Chaturdashi, the Hindu date of his death and cremation, when Navbharat Live reported thousands of devotees queuing from the morning for the samadhi puja, bhajans and the bhandara, many of them young people who had come after seeing the film.
If the ashram keeps to the Hindu date, the next one falls on Tuesday 14 September 2027, when Anant Chaturdashi comes round again; 11 September 2027 is a Saturday. We found no schedule published by the ashram, so check with Vrindavan before you travel. Kainchi’s own great day is not the punyatithi but 15 June, the anniversary of its consecration, when more than a lakh people come; our foundation day traffic plan explains how the district runs it.
Many devotees now try to see both places on one trip, and the distance is the thing to plan around. On 1 November 2026, Google Maps gave 432 km by car from Kainchi Dham to the samadhi in Vrindavan by its fastest route on NH 9, a little over eight hours that afternoon. That is too far to drive and give either place its due on the same day, so plan a night in between.
Coming up from Vrindavan, the sensible break is a night in the plains below the hills. Haldwani and Kathgodam are 43 to 49 km below Kainchi, close enough to start the climb before the morning traffic, and our guide to where to stay near Kainchi Dham compares Haldwani with Bhowali, Bhimtal and Nainital. For the drive itself, the Haldwani to Kainchi Dham guide covers both roads to Bhowali, timings and fares. In Uttar Pradesh, the state tourism corporation ran a three-day tour in September 2026 from Lucknow to the Neeb Karori ashram, his birthplace at Akbarpur and Vrindavan, following his life in the order he lived it.
If you have a primary record from 1973 that settles any of these, write to us through the contact page and we will correct the page.
He fell ill around midnight on 10 September 1973 on the steps of Mathura railway station, on his way back to Kainchi from Agra, and died at about 1 AM on 11 September at the Ramakrishna Mission hospital in Vrindavan. A heart test in Agra that day had been normal; his biographers give the cause as a diabetic coma, and no medical record has been published.
Most likely 73. The year of his birth usually given is 1900, in Akbarpur near Tundla in Firozabad district, but no document from the time settles it, so his exact age is not certain.
The accounts differ slightly. Ravi Khanna, the devotee who was with him, says he asked for water and said “Ram, Ram” before closing his eyes. The Kainchi temple trust says he repeated “Jagdish Hare”, Lord of the universe. A little earlier he had pulled off his oxygen mask, saying it was useless.
No. He died in Vrindavan on 11 September 1973. Devotees often speak of him as still present, and the marble murti installed at Kainchi Dham on 15 June 1976 is the figure they bow to today.
11 September by the English calendar. The mahasamadhi bhandara at his Vrindavan ashram follows the Hindu date of his death, Anant Chaturdashi: in 2026 the crowds came on 25 September, and in 2027 Anant Chaturdashi falls on 14 September.
A kalash of his ashes lies under his marble murti at Kainchi Dham. Portions were immersed in sacred rivers, and a portion taken to Bhopal by his elder son, Anek Singh Sharma, is still kept by the family there.