The Jarawas are one of the last major tribes on the Andamans Islands to remain untouched by 20th Century civilisation.

Until recently, they remained hostile to outside contact. In 50 years of Indian independence, the Jarawas killed nearly 90 people.

In the mid-1970s, the Island administration initiated a policy of contact with the Jarawas, which entailed leaving gifts and pots of cooked food for them in the jungle. It worked and the Jarawas became less hostile.

Officials say an injured Jarawa boy was recently rescued by the police and taken to hospital in the capital Port Blair. After the boy recovered and returned to his people, the Jarawas began to edge near the towns.

Tribe unwelcome say town people

The locals say they seem to be looking for food. But that led to tensions with the predominantly Bengali and Tamil immigrants to the island. Twice this week, the settlers set up roadblocks to force the police to drive the Jarawas away.

They complain that the Jarawas damage their crops and sometimes force their way into their houses. Many members of the tribe seem to have developed a taste for curry and rice, rather than their staple diet of coconut and raw meat.

The island's police superintendent Ujjawal Mishra says clashes between the settlers and the Jarawas cannot be ruled out.

Now the Andamans administration says it will stop formal contacts with the Jarawas and it may be better to leave them alone. The lieutenant-governor Iswari Prasad Gupta told the BBC that his administration would prefer to leave the Jarawas in, what he described, as splendid isolation. That, he said, would discourage them from venturing close to towns.