An American tourist accused of visiting a largely uncontacted tribe and leaving them a can of Food regimen Coke has been held in custody after his application for bail was denied.
Youtuber Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov was first detained in March 2025, two days after police say he set foot on North Sentinel Island, a part of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and an archipelago nearly 750 miles east of the mainland.
The island is home to the Sentinelese, a tribe which has previously killed outsiders, and is strictly illegal to go to.
Despite this, Polyakov, 25, is claimed to have stayed on the island for about an hour, filming the stunt for his YouTube channel while blowing a whistle to draw the eye of the tribespeople.
After leaving the can of Coke and a coconut behind, claiming it was an ‘offering’, he collected some sand samples before returning to his boat, police say.
Enroll for all of the newest stories
Start your day informed with Metro’s News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens.
He was spotted by some local fishermen who reported him to the authorities.
He was later arrested in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and was charged with entering a prohibited tribal reserve area, in addition to breaking Indian laws which prevent outsiders from interacting with the Sentinelese.
Polyakov was denied bail in court this week, while also seeing his judicial custody prolonged, The Times reports. If convicted he could withstand five years in prison, together with his next court appearance scheduled for April 29.
Investigators say the YouTuber had made two previous attempts to access the island – including one involving an inflatable kayak – and had researched accessibility to the island, in addition to sea conditions and tides, before he set out.
An announcement released by police on the time of his arrest said his ‘actions posed a serious threat to the security and well-being of the Sentinelese people, whose contact with outsiders is strictly prohibited by the law to guard their indigenous lifestyle’.
Polyakov was previously revealed to have undertaken other travel-related stunts, similar to visiting the Taliban and posing with guns.
He posted on his YouTube under the name ‘Neo-Orientalist’, referencing an orientalist pondering that the West is ‘more advanced’ than other cultures, similar to the Middle East.
In keeping with Survival International, a charity dedicated to working to guard tribal peoples, the Sentinelese have lived on the island for so long as 60,000 years.
The tribe is primitive, using hand-made canoes, and bows and arrows to hunt, gather and ward off unwanted visitors.
Crews who observed the island within the Nineties from boats moored a distance from shore reported bonfires on the beach at night and the sounds of individuals singing.
Women have been seen wearing fibre strings around their waists, necks and heads, while men wear necklaces and headbands with a thicker cover around their waist.
For the reason that 1800s, explorers, journalists and even royalty have attempted to make contact — all with various degrees of success.
A team of anthropologists led by Trinok Nath Pandit began visiting the island in 1967 and continued to accomplish that for many years, dropping off gifts including a pig toys, metal pots and pans, and coconuts.
While these built trust between the tribe and the anthropologists, the Indian government put a stop to the visits in 1996 after the connection never progressed beyond the deliveries.
Outsiders also contacted the islanders after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, when a helicopter was sent to the region to see in the event that they had been affected.
The tribe made the headlines again two years later after two Indian fishermen, Sunder Raj and Pandit Tiwari, were killed by the tribe when their boat broke loose from its mooring as they slept.
More recently, in November 2018, American missionary John Allen Chau attempted to go to the island in a bid to convert them to Christianity, and after being chased away on two previous occasions it’s believed he was killed.
The fishermen who had taken Chau near to the island saw tribe members dragging a body along the beach and burying it.
Writing in a journal which was left behind, Chau described North Sentinel was ‘Devil’s last stronghold’, showing frustration that he hadn’t been warmly welcomed to the island.
MORE: Sidemen Charity Match 2026: Start time and line-ups for Wembley showdown
MORE: YouTuber threw money on the ground to make ‘Jew traps’
MORE: Pokémon Pokopia players recreate Resident Evil’s Racoon City and more