Hopes of recovering US missionary's body from North Sentinel Island fading

Indian officials are set to abandon efforts to recover the body of an American missionary killed by an isolated tribe as his family cling to hope he could still be alive.

Police say John Chau was killed earlier this month by North Sentinel islanders who shot him with arrows, then buried his body on the beach.

The island is part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, India’s most distant territory.

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An anthropologist involved in the case told the South China Morning Post authorities feared any attempt to recover his body would further provoke conflict with the Sentinelese.

“We have decided not to disturb the Sentinelese,” said the anthropologist, who asked not to be named.

“We have not tried to contact them for the past many days, and have decided not to continue trying.”

He said it had been concluded that further attempts to retrieve Mr Chau’s body carried an unacceptably high “possibility of clash between the outsiders and the Sentinelese”.

On Saturday, Indian police along with the fishermen who reported seeing the 26-year-old's body, went near the island in an effort to determine how to recover the body.

But they were forced to retreat when they spotted tribesmen with bows and arrows on the beach.

They mapped the area believed to be where his body is buried. 

Mr Chau is believed to have been killed around November 16.

Fishermen he had paid to smuggle him to the island say they noticed his body being dragged across the beach and buried.

Anthropologists, activists and scholars have urged Indian officials to halt their efforts to recovery the body.

Survival International, a group that campaigns for tribal communities, have also urged authorities to call off attempts.

“The risk of a deadly epidemic of flu, measles or other outside disease is very real, and increases with every such contact,” the organisation’s director Stephen Corry said in a statement.

“Mr Chau’s body should be left alone, as should the Sentinelese.”

Meanwhile, friends and family of the devout Christian are still not giving up on the remote chance he could be alive.

Fellow missionary and friend John Middleton Ramsey, told The Sun the absence of a body offers some hope the adventurer is still out there.

“I think there’s a possibility he may have survived — I wouldn’t rule it out,” Mr Ramsey told the UK newspaper.

“Chau’s mother is a Christian too and she has said that in her prayers that she had feelings that John might still be alive.”

“There weren’t a whole lot of eyewitnesses and so since his body hasn’t been found we shouldn’t rule it out, even if it is a small chance.”

The Sentinelese are believed to be at least 30,000 years old, and have aggressively repelled outsiders for generations.

But one Indian anthropologist who made contact with the tribes people over decades said there fearsome reputation is unfair.

Former head of India’s Ministry of Tribal Affairs, T N Pandit, first visited North Sentinel Island in 1967 as part of an expedition.

“During our interactions they threatened us but it never reached a point where they went on to kill or wound. Whenever they got agitated, we stepped back,” he told the BBC.

After initially hiding in the jungle, the Sentinelese warriors shot arrows at the expedition members on later visits.

Mr Pandit, now 84, said they later left gifts behind on the island in a bid to establish links with the isolated group.

In one instance, he said they realised a tied-up pig was clearly unappreciated by the warriors when they quickly speared the animal to death and buried it under the sand.

A breakthrough came in 1991 when some of the islanders waded into the ocean and took gifts from an expedition group. But the visitors were barred from stepping ashore.

India has protected the island for decades to prevent the Sentinelese from contracting modern illnesses and to keep outsiders alive.

People are not allowed to go within five nautical miles of the island by Indian law and the Indian Navy patrols it day and night.