The Hindu : National : Andamans police planning to sneak in and retrieve bodies of slain fishermen

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 08, 2006

National

National

Andamans police planning to sneak in and retrieve bodies of slain fishermen

NEW DELHI: The Andamans police are planning to sneak into a forbidden island to retrieve the bodies of two castaways killed by members of an isolated tribe, officials said on Tuesday.

The Sentinalese killed fishermen Sunder Raj and Pandit Tiwari. The two fell asleep in their row boat, which drifted towards the North Sentinal island, 40 km from the Andamans capital Port Blair. They were killed with bows and arrows when they arrived on the shores of the island, which is out of bounds even to Indian authorities, said Dharmendra Kumar, police chief of the Indian Ocean archipelago.

The attack occurred 10 days ago and the "Stone Age" aborigines buried the pair in separate shallow graves next to their boat.

Mr. Kumar said that right now retrieval of the bodies was impossible. There would be casualties on both sides.

"They are coming out in large numbers and so let things cool down and once the tribals move to the island's other end, we'll try and sneak in," the police chief told AFP over telephone from Port Blair.

Relatives of the slain fishermen were taken by government boats and shown the two graves through binoculars, said B.S. Negi, Andamans' chief civilian administrator. The area was still surrounded by 20 naked Sentinalese.

Mr. Kumar's plan, if executed, is likely to be criticised by environmental groups, who accuse the authorities of failing to protect the archipelago's five aboriginal groups, who have lived on the island cluster for 60,000 years.

"It will be crazy if the police land on the island. They will be condemned by the whole world," warned Samir Achorya, founder, Society of Andaman and Nicobar Ecology environmental group.

Mr. Achorya said the two slain men were poaching lobsters and crabs in the off-limit waters of Sentinal.

Survival International, an international pressure forum for near-extinct tribes, accused the archipelago's administration of not doing enough to prevent fishing boats entering the island's waters, which are even forbidden to naval ships.

"These tragic deaths could have been avoided had authorities enforced the law," forum director Stephen Corry said in a statement.

Four other Stone Age tribes — the 99-member Onge, 350-member Shompens, 39 of the almost extinct Andamanese and 350 Jarawas — live on the Andamans.

Only a handful died in the tsunami waves, which lashed the archipelago on December 26, 2004, killing 3,500 people. Another 5,000 are still missing.

A military reconnaissance helicopter surveying a tsunami shipwreck near the island strayed too close to its shores last year and received a volley of arrows, one of which pierced the cockpit glass narrowly missing its startled pilot.

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