Free Republic

TN Pandit was the first anthropologist to enter the isolated Andaman island of North Sentinel, back in 1967. He says he was surprised when he heard that an American evangelist, John Allen Chau, had been killed by the Sentinelese. Speaking to ET at his residence in New Delhi, 83-year-old Pandit narrated his experiences of interacting with the Sentinelese, among the few remaining isolated tribes in the world. The tribe is not hostile, nor do they raid their neighbours, Pandit says.They only say, ‘leave us alone.’ They make it amply clear that outsiders are not welcome in their habitat. One needs...

Fighter pilots wore diapers and flew non-stop for more than nine hours to carry out the Indian Air Force's farthest and longest bombing exercise recently - symbolising the IAF's extended reach. They flew Sukhoi-30 MKI fighters to destroy mock targets in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. A senior IAF officer told HT, "The fighters dropped air-to-ground ordnance for the first time on an uninhabited island in the Andamans. We want to exploit the location of these islands to train fighter pilots for extreme missions." Six fighter planes were launched from air force bases in Bareilly and Pune for the experimental...