India 307 (Jurel 90, Jaiswal 73, Bashir 5-119) and 192 for 5 (Rohit 55, Gill 52*, Bashir 3-79) beat England 353 (Root 122*, Robinson 58, Jadeja 4-67, Akash 3-78) and 145 (Crawley 60, Ashwin 5-51, Kuldeep 4-22) by five wickets
Ranchi: England threatened to pull off a famous victory only for India to seal the series with a five-wicket win on the fourth day of the fourth Test in Ranchi.
Shoaib Bashir took two wickets in two balls just after lunch to leave India five down and 72 runs short of their target of 192.
But Shubman Gill made a chanceless unbeaten 52, sharing an unbroken stand of 72 with Dhruv Jurel, who ended 39 not out.
India had earlier been cruising, only to lose three wickets for 16 runs. Yashasvi Jaiswal skewed Joe Root to James Anderson to be out for 37, Rohit Sharma edged Tom Hartley behind on 55 and Rajat Patidar was out to Bashir for a duck.
Scoring stopped, tension rose and England's belief grew. When Bashir pulled off his double strike, the prospect of an England win began to feel like a reality.
Instead India take an unassailable 3-1 lead and stretch a proud unbeaten record that dates back to 2012, while England suffer their first series defeat under Ben Stokes' captaincy.
There is a break of more than a week before the fifth and final Test in Dharamsala begins on 7 March.
This was a captivating conclusion to a superb Test in what has been a wonderful series. When Rohit and Jaiswal were making untroubled progress to 82-0 there was no sign of the drama that would follow.
England were excellent on Monday, buzzing around in the field in an attempt to recapture the initiative they surrendered on Sunday.