Don’t be...

When he reached the island on the morning of November 15, he wrote that the islanders spotted him and blocked his exit. He gave them gifts but was fired upon — “it was metal, thin but very sharp. I stumbled back and I was yelling at the kid for shooting me,” his journal said. Chau is believed to have chronicled his experience before making his last trip to the island the next day. The exact sequence of events after that is not known. The fishermen, who were allegedly bribed by Chau and took him close to the island, saw the tribespeople dragging his body on the beach and burying his remains on November 17. Chau, thought to be an evangelist, was possibly killed with arrows, police said. Authorities have decided to contact anthropologists to devise a strategy to recover Chau’s body.

“I can’t wait to see them around the throne of God worshipping in their own language as Revelations 7:9-10 states,” he wrote, referring to the apocalyptic final book of the Bible’s New Testament. “God, I don’t want to die.” North Sentinel is estimated to have about 60 Sentinelese people, who survive by hunting, fishing and collecting wild plants. The exact population, however, is not known. The access to North Sentinel Island and its buffer zone is strictly restricted under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribe (Regulation), 1956, and Regulations under Indian Forest Act, 1927. In a message on Chau’s purported Instagram page, his family said it forgave “those reportedly responsible for his death” and requested “release of those friends he had in the Andaman Island.” “Words cannot express the sadness we have experienced about this report,” the message said, adding that “he had nothing but love for the Sentinelese people”. Though the family’s post said Chau was a “Christian missionary” to some, senior officials of the home ministry said he was more of an adventurer than an evangelist. VHP has demanded a probe to ascertain if Chau was a Christian missionary on a campaign to convert the tribespeople.