Social activist and Gandhian Baba Amte, whose chance encounter with a finger-less leprosy patient dying in the rain changed his life forever, died at his ashram in Maharashtra early on Saturday.

He was 93 and had been suffering from blood cancer.

The man, whom the Father of the Nation had called abhay sadhak (fearless), passed away at 4.15 in the morning, leaving behind his two sons and thousands of leprosy-afflicted people who revered him as a saint.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who described Baba Amte as a “legend” and a “true Gandhian”, cut short a trip to Pune as a mark of respect and returned to Delhi.

The Maharashtra government has “decided to give Baba Amte a state funeral” tomorrow, minister Anees Ahmed told PTI.

Ahmed, who looks after Chandrapur district where the Magsaysay award winner’s ashram Anandwan is situated, said the social activist would be laid to rest, not cremated, as he had wished.

Born on December 26, 1914, in Maharashtra’s Wardha district, Baba Amte, whose real name was Murlidhar Devidas, trained as a lawyer and took part in the freedom struggle.

“I have never been frightened of anything. Because I fought British Tommies to save the honour of an Indian lady, Gandhiji called me ‘abhay sadhak’, a fearless seeker of truth…. But the same person… quivered in fright when he saw the living corpse of Tulshiram, no fingers, no clothes, with maggots all over,” Baba Amte had said, recalling his encounter with the dying man.

Terrified, the young Devidas had run away, but forced himself to return and feed the man. He also put up a bamboo shed to protect him from the rain. Tulshiram died under his care and the incident changed the young man’s life.

In 1949, Baba Amte went to the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine to learn more about leprosy. Armed with a wonder drug, he started Anandwan, which soon became the centre of his crusade — helping leprosy patients become self-confident and “productive”.

He also once allowed bacilli from a leprosy patient to be injected into him for tests.

In 1983, he was awarded the Damien-Dutton award, considered the highest in the field of leprosy.

He also spoke out against caste and religious violence and, in December 1985, went on a Bharat Jodo (unite India) march from Kanyakumari to Jammu.

Asked whether he saw himself as a messiah or a social worker, Baba Amte had said he couldn’t carry the “heavy load of that cross” carried by Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Father Damien, a 19th-century Belgian priest who worked among leprosy patients and died of the disease. “But can’t I walk in the shadow, in the purview of that cross?”