The man has now been arrested by the police in India.
The island group in the Bay of Bengal is closed to visitors to protect the indigenous people, but the 24-year-old man from the American state of Arizona defied the ban at the end of March in an attempt to make contact with the population. He took a boat to the island with the help of a GPS sender and stayed on the beach for an hour, blew a whistle to lure the inhabitants and left after recording a video. A tombstone with Diet Coke was left behind.
Upon his return to an Indian island 120 miles east of the Indian mainland, he was arrested by the police.
He planned his trip carefully for several days to make contact with the indigenous people, the Sentinelese (Andamaners), says police chief Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwa.
Previous attempts have been made to make contact with the people on the island. In 2018, an American missionary was killed with arrows when he sought contact. Two fishermen who in 2006 accidentally sought refuge on the island were also killed.
Indian authorities have minimal and controlled contact with the isolated island people – sometimes bananas and coconuts are left as gifts, and the Indian coastguard patrols the sea outside the coast.
