Indian police arrested an American YouTuber for visiting an island in the Indian Ocean that’s restricted to outsiders.
HuffPost reports that 24-year-old Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, from Scottsdale, Arizona, was arrested on March 31 after setting foot on North Sentinel Island, where he left a Diet Coke can and a coconut as an offering to the inhabitants.
He visited the island on March 29 in an attempt to meet the Sentinelese tribe; the territory is part of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Polyakov is currently in judicial custody, with his next hearing set for April 17. He could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and a fine. Indian authorities reached out to the US Embassy to notify them of the charges.
According to police, Polyakov used GPS to find the island via boat. He allegedly stayed on the beach for an hour where he blew a whistle to get the islanders’ attention, to no avail. He left the Diet Coke and coconut offering, captured the moment on camera, and gathered sand samples before leaving.
Two fishermen saw him leaving the island and called the authorities. Police said Polyakov prepared himself for the trip by studying sea conditions, ties, and access to the island.
“He planned meticulously over several days to visit the island and make contact with the Sentinel tribe,” Senior Police Officer Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwal said.
Police described his “actions posed a serious threat to the safety and well-being of the Sentinelese people, whose contact with outsiders is strictly prohibited by the law to protect their indigenous way of life.”
An investigation in Polyakov revealed that he had tried to visit the island twice before, in October 2024 and January, and that his urgency to meet the tribe was due to his “passion for adventure and extreme challenges.”
Outsiders are prohibited from traveling within three miles of North Sentinel Island, and inhabitants are suspicious of visitors. The local tribe has been cut off from the world for thousands of years, and still uses spears and bows to hunt. In 2018, they killed an American missionary, and in 2006, they killed two fishermen, both for landing on the beach.