American tourists arrested for a trip to North Sentinel Island

An American tourist was arrested after pretending to be traveled on an island far from Bengal Bay and tried to contact one of the most isolated tribes in the world.

Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, made the trip to North Sentinel Island, which houses the enigmatic Sentinel tribe on March 29, Indian police told CNN.

North Sentinel Island is a terrestrial mass about the size of Manhattan in the archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar, about 750 miles from the Indian continent. Visiting the island is prohibited by Indian law to maintain the sentry way of life and to protect them from modern diseases, of which they lack immunity.

While Polyakov managed to reach the island, he does not seem to have contacted the Sentinelese tribe, I will Jitéra Kumar Meena, chief of the Department of Criminal Investigations of the Police of Andaman and Nicobar in CNN. He was spotted by a local fisherman on the way back and arrested two days later, said Meena. Police seized a Polyakov inflatable boat and engine. He has not yet been accused of offenses.

A spokesperson for the US State Department said: “We are aware of the detention of an American citizen in India” in a statement in CNN, but we could not comment on the case. It is not clear if Polyakov has kept a lawyer.

The Sentinelese only contacted the modern world sometimes and are known to vigorously reject foreigners. Because the Sentilele are so reclusive, it is difficult to know how many there are – estimates go from dozens to hundreds.

The previous meetings with the tribe proved to be fatal. In 2018, the American missionary John Allen Chau would have been killed by tribes after his arrival on North Sentinel Island, hoping to convert the local population to Christianity.

Polyakov is “lucky not to have been in contact otherwise he would have met the same fate,” said Meena.

Caroline Pearce, director of Survival International, a non -profit organization dedicated to the protection of isolated tribal groups, described the alleged actions of Polyakov “imprudent and idioms”.

“The actions of this person not only endangered their own life, but they put the life of the whole Sentinelese tribe in danger,” Pearce said in a statement.

“It is very well known now that unisposed peoples have no immunity for common external diseases such as flu or measles, which could eliminate them completely,” she added.

Polyakov planned her trip well in advance, visiting the Andaman islands twice before going to North Sentinel during her third visit, which pretended to be about 25 miles away in the south of Andaman, said Meena.

“According to what he revealed in the investigation so far, he said he wanted adventures. He said he had left bottles of soft drink for the tribe, but we haven’t found anything so far,” said Meena. Police seized the Polyakov phone and GoPro, as well as a bottle of sand that he would have collected on the island.

A special investigation team is searching for the island from afar, on boats using twins, despite the jerky waters in recent days, said Meena.

Tribe “ most isolated ” in the world

There are more than 100 incomparable tribes around the world, mainly in the Amazon forest, but the Sentinele are “the most isolated indigenous peoples in the world”, according to Survival International. Most of what we know comes from boats moored more than the distance from an arrow of the shore and the rare encounters spent with the authorities.

The Sentinele hunts in the tropical forest and fish in coastal waters using spears, arcs and arrows, as well as canoes to outrigger narrow house, according to Survival International. They think they live in three groups in large community huts and more informal shelters on the beach.

The first contact with the Sentinelese tribe was established by the British in the late 1800s, when, despite their attempts to hide, six individuals in the tribe were captured and taken to the main island of the Archipelago of the island of Andaman.

An Indian law of 1956 prohibits foreigners from going to North Sentinel and other islands of the archipelago which houses indigenous groups.

With the exception of a brief friendly interaction in the early 1990s, the Sentinele fiercely resisted contact with foreigners, even after a disaster.

In 2004, after the Asian tsunami which devastated the Andaman chain, a member of the tribe was photographed on a beach on the island, pulling arrows on a helicopter sent to check their well-being.

Two years later, members of the tribe killed two poachers who were illegally caught in the waters surrounding North Sentinel Island after their boat derived on the ground, according to Survival International.

Pearce, from Survival International, said that India – which has constituted military infrastructure on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in recent years in the event of confrontation with China – has a “legal responsibility” to protect the sentinel people against missionaries, influencers of social media, illegal fishermen or anyone else.

There have been other meetings with not disputed tribes in recent years.

In February, a young man of an isolated native tribe in Brazil established a brief contact with the outside world before returning to the Amazon forest.

In 2024, Survival International published rare images of the Mashco Piro tribe, not happy in the remote Peruvian Amazon, indicating that the tribe was trying to escape the loggers.