YouTuber arrested after trying to contact remote Indian tribe, police say
Indian police have arrested an American YouTuber, accusing him of traveling to the remote North Sentinel Island – home to one of the world’s most isolated tribes – without authorization.
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 police said 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 entered the island “claiming unofficial representation of the U.S.” 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.
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 3-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 yearslong plan to convert its residents to Christianity. Two Indian fishermen were also killed in 2006 after their boat drifted onto 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 that Polyakov is a U.S. citizen, as did Indian police.
The U.S. State Department said in a statement it was aware of reports of the detention of a U.S. 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 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 organization 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.