The Sentinelese inhabit North Sentinel Island, a heavily forested island in the Andaman Sea protected under Indian law by a strict exclusion zone that bars outsiders from approaching within five kilometers.
The tribe gained international attention in 2018 after members killed American missionary John Allen Chau, who illegally traveled to the island in an attempt to establish contact.

Anthropologist Anstice Justin, who participated in government-authorized contact missions between 1986 and 2004, said the increasing frequency of unauthorized attempts to reach the island suggested isolation alone may no longer guarantee the tribe’s safety.

“We would be living in a fool’s paradise if we assume they are living in their own insulated world,” Justin told AFP in Sri Vijaya Puram, the administrative capital formerly known as Port Blair.

Justin, a former deputy director of the Anthropological Survey of India, said official expeditions to the island yielded limited knowledge about the tribe, whose population is estimated by the government at around 50 people and classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group.

During his first landing on the island in 1986, Justin said he and other researchers approached the shore carrying coconuts as gestures of goodwill before observing members of the tribe emerge from the rainforest. He said the encounters showed no overt hostility beyond the Sentinelese determination to defend their territory.

Indian authorities currently follow what officials describe as an “eyes on, hands off” policy, relying on distant monitoring while prohibiting direct engagement with the tribe to minimize the risk of disease transmission and cultural disruption.

Rights organization Survival International has defended the no-contact policy, warning that interaction with outsiders historically devastated Indigenous populations across the archipelago through imported illnesses. The group says the Sentinelese have consistently demonstrated they do not want outside contact.

Police chief HGS Dhaliwal said marine patrols and surprise inspections were continuing around the island, although preventing all breaches remained difficult.

Authorities in February arrested two fishermen accused of entering restricted waters near the island. Last year, American citizen Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov was detained after briefly landing on the island carrying a coconut and a can of Diet Coke in what investigators said was an attempt to gain attention online.

He later pleaded guilty to violating protected-area restrictions and was deported after serving a short jail sentence and paying a fine.

Justin argued that carefully regulated communication with the Sentinelese might eventually become necessary to warn them about growing external threats and unauthorized visitors.