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Indian police arrested American YouTuber Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov for illegally visiting North Sentinel Island.
Polyakov faces up to eight years in prison for attempting contact with the isolated Sentinelese tribe.
Indian police have arrested an American YouTuber, accusing him of travelling to remote North Sentinel Island – home to one of the world’s most isolated tribes – without authorisation.
Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, faces a maximum of eight years in prison if convicted.
Polyakov, of Scottsdale, Arizona, was drawn to the island, home to the Sentinelese, because of “his passion for adventure and his desire to undertake extreme challenges”, Andaman and Nicobar Islands policesaid in a statement.
He arrived on an inflatable boat with a coconut and a can of Diet Coke as a gift to the indigenous people, police said. A review of his GoPro footage showed he had entered the island “claiming unofficial representation of the US”, police said in a statement.
It was Polyakov’s third attempt to reach the island after being stopped in October 2024 and January 2025, police said, adding that he had planned his journey “meticulously” with research into tides and weather.
North Sentinel Island, in India's southeastern Andaman and Nicobar Islands, is home to the Sentinelese people. Visiting the island is illegal and the Indian Government patrols a three-mile buffer zone to protect those living there. Photo / / AP
He landed on the island but did not find anybody, police said, staying for around five minutes while collecting sand samples and recording a video. He then returned to his boat and remained offshore for an hour, blowing a whistle, but received no response. He was later spotted by local fishermen when he returned to Kurma Dera Beach. The fisherman reported Polyakov to Indian authorities.
Visiting the island is illegal, and the Indian Government patrols a three-mile buffer zone around it to protect those living there.
The prohibition also protects would-be visitors. The Sentinelese have violently resisted foreign contact in the past, killing American missionary John Allen Chau in 2018 after he landed on the island as part of a years-long plan to convert its residents to Christianity. Two Indian fishermen were also killed in 2006 after their boat drifted on to the island while they were asleep.
HGS Dhaliwal, the chief of police for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, said contact with the tribe is dangerous because they have been hostile to outsiders in the past.
“Polyakov was just trying to be a thrill-seeking adventurer who manages a contact with this primitive and reclusive tribe,” he told the Washington Post in a text message.
At a court hearing on Friday, Polyakov was remanded in judicial custody for 14 days before his next appearance on April 17, police said.
Ilango Dhandapani, a lawyer for Polyakov, said in a text message that his client denied the allegations. Dhandapani said Polyakov is a US citizen, as did Indian police.
The US State Department said in a statement it was aware of reports of the detention of a US citizen in India and was monitoring the situation.
The YouTube channel Neo-Orientalist, which police said belonged to Polyakov, has just over 700 subscribers and shows him previously on a three-week trip across Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Five months ago, it posted a cartoon-style image of a man on a boat with a small dog heading for a remote island, with the caption: “A little Columbus Day teaser for the fans.”
The Sentinelese are the most isolated indigenous people in the world, according to Survival International, which works to protect indigenous groups. The small forested island of North Sentinel is about the size of New York City’s Manhattan and is part of a chain that is also home to the Shompen, another isolated group, according to the agency.
On Thursday, tribal welfare officers surveyed the island by boat, using binoculars, to ensure there was nothing left behind that could endanger the tribe, a senior Andaman and Nicobar police officer told news agency Press Trust India.
Little is known about the Sentinelese, but they are hunter-gatherers and are estimated to number from 50 to 200 people, Survival International spokesman Jonathan Mazower said.
Mazower said attempting to contact the group is a “completely crazy and incredibly irresponsible and reckless thing to do”, as forcing contact upon uncontacted people “almost always ends up with catastrophic levels of death among them from epidemics of diseases”.
He said while isolated indigenous groups are already at risk from practices like logging and mining, his organisation is also seeing a growing threat from influencers carrying out stunts “just for the sake of subscribers. It’s definitely an increasing trend and really worrying”, he said.
