This has also extended the boundaries of the Island on the west and south side by as much as one km. The exposed corals have now become dry land or shallow lagoons. As the land lifted, surrounding corals were exposed. The earthquake tilted the plate tectonics under the island and lifted it by one to two meters. The topography of this island changed on 26 December 2004 after an earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. It is merely 142 km away from Sumatra and 1,200 km from mainland India. It is one of the islands comprising the Andaman Island Archipelago. North Sentinel Island is located in the Bay of Bengal. In January 2006, two Indian fishermen, Sunder Raj and Pandit Tiwari, were also killed by the Sentinelese Tribals after their fishing boat floated within range of the Islanders after its makeshift anchor broke.Before and after the 2004 Tsunami. They speak their own language, not related to the native languages found on the surrounding islands and survive as hunter-gatherers. The Sentinelese tribal is estimated to number anywhere from 40 to 500 individuals and are believed to have lived on North Sentinel Island for as long as 55,000 years. Indian authorities confirmed that seven people had been arrested for illegally transporting Chau to the island and on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. His intention was to meet the aborigines.”Ĭhau had been to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands several times before from 2015 to 2017. “But in a strict sense, he was not a missionary. “People thought he is a missionary because he had mentioned his position on God and that he was a believer on social media or somewhere online,” Pathak told the NewsMinute, an Indian news website. The Andaman Director of the General Police, Dependra Pathak, described Chau as “some kind of paramedic” who was on “a misplaced adventure in a prohibited area to meet uncontacted persons.” Prosecuting a Sentinelese person for murder would be impossible. The police said the Indian Coast Guard and Forest and Tribal Welfare Departments are working on a plan to recover Chau’s body.īelieved to be the last pre-Neolithic tribe in the world with no immunity to modern diseases, the Sentinelese are legally protected by India and recognized as a sovereign state. “From the silhouette of the body, clothing and circumstances, it appeared to be the body of John Allen Chau to them,” the police said.Ĭhau’s body is yet to be recovered from the island, which is about 50 km west of Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 17, the fisherman saw some of the tribal people dragging a dead body and burying it on shore. He attended Oral Roberts University, an evangelical Christian university in Oklahoma and most recently resided in Washington state.Ĭhau had stayed for a month in the Andaman islands, a remote Indian territory closer to Myanmar than India, and had tried to contact the tribe five times, according to a source from Andaman who worked closely with the Indian police investigating. On his Instagram account Chau described himself as someone who was a Snakebite Survivor, Wilderness EMT (Emergency Medical Technician), Outbound Collective Explorer and Following the Way.
He loved God, life, helping those in need, and had nothing but love for the Sentinelese people.” “To others, he was a Christian missionary, a wilderness EMT, an international soccer coach, and a mountaineer.
“He was a beloved son, brother, uncle and best friend to us,” Chau’s family wrote on Instagram. The fisherman reportedly left him in the vicinity of North Sentinel Island around midnight, and Chau continued alone in a canoe in the early hours of Nov. The island is a restricted area and entry without permission is illegal. Chau visited the Sentinelese by bribing local fishermen to take him to their island, according to the press statement.
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