Indian troops disarmed Sikkim's palace guard in 1975; the last king died in New York, his heir died on a mountain road, and a federal committee was still deciding which palace property the family owns

Palden Thondup Namgyal was born in 1923, the second son of Sikkim's ruler. His elder brother, the intended heir, was killed in 1941 serving with the British air force, and Palden was called out of a monastery to train for the throne. He became Chogyal in 1964. He married the American Hope Cooke in 1963. On 9 April 1975 the Indian army surrounded his palace in Gangtok and overran the Sikkim Guards. He said he was under house arrest. A referendum backed ending the monarchy, and he said it was rigged. Sikkim became India's 22nd state. His son, Crown Prince Tenzing, died in 1978 at 26 when his car went off a narrow Gangtok road. The Chogyal died of cancer in New York in January 1982, aged 58. The family's property is still in dispute. In 2013 the family's counsel told India's Supreme Court that whether a property belongs to the Chogyal family or to the state must be decided by the central government, which had appointed a High Power Committee, and that the matter was pending. In one case, a house the Chogyal gave to a loyal servant's family in 1969 was reclaimed by the state; the family was evicted in 2016, and the Sikkim High Court dismissed their appeal on 20 November 2020.