Officials observing island where missionary was killed

Indian authorities continued over the weekend to search for a way to recover the body of John Allen Chau, an American Christian missionary who was killed a week and a half ago by inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, an isolated island in the Bay of Bengal. Dependera Pathak, director-general of police on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, said officials approached North Sentinel Friday and Saturday by boat to observe the Sentinelese, who live with almost no contact from the outside world. Scholars are also studying a 2006 case in which tribesmen killed a fisherman whose boat drifted ashore. Authorities never recovered his body. “We are looking carefully at what happened then, and what [the Sentinelese] did,” Pathak said. “We are consulting anthropologists to see what kind of friendly gesture we can make.”

Chau, 26, paid several local fishermen to take him to the island in hopes of sharing Jesus Christ with the tribesmen. The fishermen reported the Sentinelese killed him and buried his body on the beach. Indian law forbids outsiders from visiting North Sentinel because of danger to visitors from violence and to islanders from outside disease.