Gautam's death in 1999 was sudden. After returning from a location shooting of his last film "Rong Bin", which was never completed, the next day he went to the "Indropuri Studio" to meet his longtime cinematographer friend and colleague, Vivek Banerjee and there he collapsed and died of a heart attack. An entire generation of budding musicians who had been popularised by Gautam Kolkata mourned his untimely death and a tribute album "Moni Chara Shunno Laage" was released; Moni was not Gautam's nickname, but his siblings would call him Moni-da, moni, defining that he was the third of the brothers. His nickname was Manik.