YouTuber who ‘left Diet Coke’ for world’s most isolated tribe has bail plea rejected

An American tourist who allegedly stepped onto a remote Indian island to make contact with one of the world’s most isolated tribes was denied bail on Tuesday.

Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, was arrested on 31 March for allegedly sneaking onto the restricted territory of North Sentinel in the Andaman Islands and offering a can of diet coke and a coconut to the tribe as an offering.

A court in Port Blair, capital of the federal territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, rejected Mr Polyakov’s bail application and extended his judicial custody, PTI news agency reported.

He was scheduled to appear before the court again on Thursday.

Mr Polyakov, a YouTuber, arrived in Port Blair on 27 March and was arrested three days later after he was reported to local police by some residents who saw him take a boat to North Sentinel Island.

He was charged with entering a prohibited tribal reserve area of the North Sentinel Island, protected under the Andaman & Nicobar Islands Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation 1956.

He could face up to five years in prison and a fine if found guilty.

Indians and foreigners alike are banned from going within 5km of North Sentinel to protect the indigenous tribe from external diseases and safeguard their way of life.

There are only around 150 members of the isolated tribe left on the island, which is cut off from the rest of the world, and not much is known about their way of life.

The Sentinelese last made headlines in 2018, when they killed an American missionary, John Allen Chau, 27, who was trying to enter their territory to preach Christianity. He was killed after the tribespeople shot him with arrows as his boat approached the island.

In 2006 the tribe killed two Indian fishermen who had accidentally drifted near the island. When a military helicopter later flew low over the island, members of the tribe fired arrows at it.

Police say Mr Polyakov sailed nine hours in a rubber dinghy with an outboard motor to reach the island and used binoculars to survey the area but saw no inhabitants. He is said to have recorded his visit to the island, leaving a can of Coke and a coconut on the shore as an “offering” to the North Sentinelese.

Police said Mr Polyakov conducted detailed research on sea conditions, tides and accessibility to the island before launching his journey.

“He planned meticulously over several days to visit the island and make contact with the tribe,” Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwal, a senior police officer in Port Blair, said.

In a statement, police said that the YouTuber’s “actions posed a serious threat to the safety and wellbeing of the Sentinelese people, whose contact with outsiders is strictly prohibited by the law to protect their indigenous way of life”.

Police seized Mr Polyakov’s phone as well as the GoPro camera he is said to have used to record his trip. He allegedly filled a bottle with sand from the island and taken it away with him.

Caroline Pearce, director of Survival International, a charity dedicated to the protection of tribal groups, said the incident was “deeply disturbing”.

“It beggars belief that someone could be that reckless and idiotic. This person’s actions not only endangered his own life, they put the lives of the entire Sentinelese tribe at risk,” she said. “It is very well known by now that uncontacted peoples have no immunity to common outside diseases like flu or measles, which could completely wipe them out.”

The Sentinelese, she said, “have made their wish to avoid outsiders incredibly clear over the years”.