Spiritual leader Sathya Sai Baba who has thousands of followers in India and abroad died of cardiac and respiratory failure after a prolonged illness.

He was 85."Sathya Sai Baba is no more with us physically.

He left his body at 7.40 a.m. due to cardiac and respiratory failure," said a statement from the Sathya Sai Baba super-speciality hospital where he had been admitted March 28.

The news of his death plunged his followers, many of whom had thronged the town, into grief.