A carbonaceous sorbent prepared from an indigenous agricultural waste, jack fruit peel, by acid treatment was tested for its efficiency in removing basic dyes. Malachite green, a common basic dyestuff of triphenyl methane series used for dyeing silk and wool directly and cotton mordanted with tannin to deep green, was chosen for investigation. The process parameters studied include agitation time, initial dye concentration, carbon dose, pH and temperature. The adsorption followed first order reaction equation and the rate Is mainly controlled by intraparticle diffusion. Freundlich, Langmuir and Redlich-Peterson isotherm models were applied to the equilibrium data. The adsorption capacity (Q(o)) obtained from the Langmuir isotherm plot was 166.37 mg g(-1) at an initial pH of 6.0 and at 32 +/- 0.5degreesC. The influence of pH on dye removal was not significant and the adsorption capacity increased with increase in temperature. A portion of the dye was recovered from the spent carbon using 50% acetic acid (v/v).