Police said Saturday that they have mapped the area of a remote Indian island where tribespeople were seen burying the body of an American adventurer and Christian missionary after allegedly killing him with arrows this month.
NEW DELHI — Police said Saturday that they have mapped the area of a remote Indian island where tribespeople were seen burying the body of an American adventurer and Christian missionary after allegedly killing him with arrows this month.
During their visit to the island’s surroundings on Friday, investigators also spotted four or five North Sentinel islanders moving in the area from a distance of about 500 meters (1,600 feet) from a boat and studied their behavior for several hours, said Dependra Pathak, the director-general of police of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where North Sentinel is located.
« We have more or less identified the site and the area in general, » Pathak said by phone.
Indian authorities have been struggling to figure out how to recover the body of 26-year-old John Allen Chau, who was killed by North Sentinel islanders who apparently shot him with arrows and then buried his body on the beach.
Friday’s visit was the second boat expedition of the week by a team of police and officials from the forest department, tribal welfare department and coast guard, Pathak said.
The officials took two of the seven people arrested for helping Chau get close to the island in an effort to determine his route and the circumstances of his death. The fishermen who had taken Chau to the shore saw the tribespeople dragging and burying his body on the morning of Nov. 17.
Pathak said investigators have asked experts to give them « the nuances of the group’s conduct and behavior, particularly in this kind of violent behavior, » before they attempt to recover the body.
Officials typically don’t travel to the North Sentinel area, where people live as their ancestors did thousands of years ago.
