The adsorption of chromium(VI) onto ZnCl2 activated carbon developed from coir pith was investigated to assess the possible use of this adsorbent. The influence of contact time, adsorbent dose, Cr(VI) concentration, pH and temperature were investigated. The two theoretical adsorption isotherms, namely, Langmuir and Freundlich were used to describe the experimental results. The Langmuir adsorption capacity (Q0) was found to be 120.5 mg Cr(VI) per g of the adsorbent. The adsorption followed the second-order kinetics and was found to be maximum at pH 2.0. The pH effect and the desorption studies showed that ion exchange mechanism might be involved in the adsorption process. The effects of foreign ions such as chloride, sulphate, phosphate, selenite, molybdate, nitrate and perchlorate on the removal of Cr(VI) have been investigated. The removal of Cr(VI) from synthetic ground water was also tested. The results show that ZnCl2 activated coir pith carbon is effective for the removal of Cr(VI) from water.