On Saturday, a team of officers took a boat near the remote North Sentinel Island, which is a part of India, where they spotted the tribe members on the beach close to where authorities believeJohn Allen Chauwas buried.
“The Sentinelese were watchful,” Dependra Pathak, director general of police of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, told theNew York Times. “They were patrolling the beach, at the same spot John was killed, with weapons.”
John Chau/Instagram
Pathak said the officers sped off to avoid a confrontation with the endangered Sentinelese Tribe, who were armed with bows and arrows.
“Had we approached,” he said, “they would have attacked.”
“This case is the strangest and toughest in my life,” he told theTimes. “We are trying to enter into another civilization’s world.”
John Chau.John Chau/Instagram
Since his death, police have sent out teams consisting of coastal guards and officials from the country’s tribal welfare department and forest department to strategize about how to recover his body.
Joining them on their mission have been the fisherman who took Chau to the island and later allegedly watched tribe members drag his body across the beach and bury it in a shallow grave.
Several fishermen and one other man who allegedly helped Chau get on the island are charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder and with violating rules protecting aboriginal tribes, the Times reports. Other charges are filed against the tribe members in Chau’s death, according to the paper.
“We have mapped the area with the help of these fishermen,” Pathak told theAssociated Press. “We have not spotted the body yet but we roughly know the area where he is believed to be buried.”
Any contact with outsiders could prove deadly for tribe members because members may not have the immunity to fight off diseases and illnesses such as the flu.
In 2006, the tribe killed two crab fisherman who washed up on shore. A week after their deaths, their bodies were seen attached to bamboo stakes.
“It was a kind of scarecrow,” Pathak toldAFP. “We are studying the 2006 case,” Pathak added. “We are asking anthropologists what they do when they kill an outsider. We are trying to understand the group psychology.”
Pathak told theTimesthat he didn’t believe the bodies of the two fisherman were ever retrieved and mentioned the same fate might happen to Chau. “If maybe, from a distance, we can see John’s body, then at least his death gets fully established,” he said.
“I hollered, ‘My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you,” Chau explained in his journal on Nov. 16.
The graduate of Oral Roberts University then wrote that one of the tribespeople struck him with an arrow, which pierced through his Bible.
“You guys might think I’m crazy in all this but I think it’s worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people,” Chau wrote before adding, “God, I don’t want to die.”
The following day, Chau ventured back to the island with the help of the local fisherman and tried to make contact again. On November 17, the local fisherman watched as the Sentinelese people dragged Chau’s body away and buried him, CNNreported.
“Why does this beautiful place have to have so much death here?” Chau wrote in his journal. “I hope this isn’t one of my last notes but if it is ‘to God be the Glory.”
source: people.com
