"This tribe is not hostile and a strategy is needed to prevent an epidemic in such a small

community," anthropologist Trilok Nath Pandit, 84, told EL PAÍS. The octogenarian expert
knows what he's talking about, as he is the only survivor of the expedition who first contacted
the tribe that inhabits the island of North Sentinel in 1967. This community of hunters and
gatherers, who have lived isolated for tens of thousands of years on a 72-square-kilometer
island bathed by the Andaman Sea (east of India), has been in the global media spotlight for a
week after a young U.S. missionary was allegedly killed by members of the tribe. John Allen
Chau, 26 years old, died on November 16 while trying to get in touch with the natives (whom
he wanted to evangelize), but they attacked him with arrows and buried his body on the
beach, according to the fishermen who moved Chau to this remote place. The police have yet
to locate his body.

The problem now is getting the lifeless body of Allen Chau, which creates a dilemma for the
Indian authorities. Access to the island to remove Chau's body would break the voluntary
isolation of this tribe, with all the anthropological and health consequences that this entails,
apart from the danger of setting foot in this place.