Is there a secret crematorium at the Isha Yoga Center?
The claim
The version that circulates is not that Isha runs crematoriums. It is that a crematorium inside the Yoga Center is used to burn people who have disappeared.
Two different things
Isha manages government crematoriums in towns and cities, designated by the Tamil Nadu government since 2010. In 2020 it ran a free COVID service it called Dignity in Death at those sites. News18 and India TV reported on 9 December 2025 that municipal administration minister K.N. Nehru inaugurated a free service for below-poverty-line families at Isha-managed gas crematoriums. Those reports put the number at 17, quote the minister as saying the sites, called Isha Kayantha Sthanam, had handled over 100,000 cremations, and name locations in Chennai, Vellore, Thanjavur and Coimbatore district. Those are town facilities.
Separately, Isha built a gas crematorium at Ikkarai Boluvampatti, the village of the Yoga Center, called the Kalabhairavar Dhagana Mandapam. That is a licensed burning ground, not a hidden hall. It is the one the court case was about.
What the court did
On 29 May 2024 The Hindu reported that Isha undertook to the Madras High Court not to operate the Ikkarai Boluvampatti unit until the pollution control board issued a consent to operate. On 12 June 2024 DT Next reported a bench restraining operation until the petition was decided, and asking the board to inspect. The neighbour's case was about distance from his land, not about missing persons.
On 21 January 2026 a division bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G. Arul Murugan dismissed the petitions. The New Indian Express, DT Next, LawBeat and the Times of India reported the order on 29 January. The only ground pressed was Rule 7 of the Tamil Nadu Village Panchayats (Provision of Burial and Burning Grounds) Rules, 1999, the 90-metre distance from houses and drinking water. The court held, following a full bench in Jagadeeswari v. B. Babu Naidu, that once the panchayat has licensed the ground under Rule 5, that distance bar does not apply. It said a gasifier crematorium served the village and was not against public interest. Case title in the LawBeat report: Murugammal and others v. State of Tamil Nadu and others.
The licence challenge is over. The page does not have the pollution board's consent-to-operate attached. With the petitions dismissed, the unit is the one Isha now runs at the village, under the panchayat licence the court upheld.
Still worth attaching: the 21 January 2026 order, and the consent to operate.
Sources
- New Indian Express, 29 Jan 2026
- DT Next, 29 Jan 2026
- LawBeat, 28 Jan 2026
- Times of India, 29 Jan 2026
- The Hindu, 29 May 2024, the earlier undertaking
- News18, 9 Dec 2025, the government sites