India 'moved east' after tsunami

A seismologist in India says that the country has moved closer to Indonesia due to the massive earthquake which triggered the tsunami in December.

Dr Vineet Gahlaut said that India had shifted a few centimetres eastwards.

He said the earthquake had increased stress on the fault system separating India and Indonesia and heightened the threat of another big earthquake.

Dr Gahlaut made his comments after a one-month survey of the Earth's surface in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Satellite technology

The expedition reveals the geographical distance between India and Indonesia - the epicentre of the deadly earthquake - has been reduced by between five metres and 15mm.

The amount of movement depended on the closeness of different areas to the epicentre of the quake, Dr Gahlaut explained.

The team is not clear when another earthquake will happen

He said that all of the Indian mainland, but not the Andaman and Nicobar Islands - which are on a different tectonic plate - had moved eastwards.

Dr Gahlaut led a four member team of the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as part of his research, and used satellite technology to make the measurements.

He told the BBC that the 26 December quake had resulted in the eastward movement of the Indian coastal region by a few millimetres.

At the same time, it had caused the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to move westwards by between one metre and 20m.

In the Indonesian island of Sumatra, he said the movement was as much as 20m.

He said that the distance between Hyderabad, Bangalore and Sumatra had been shortened from 10 to 15mm.

Dr Gahlaut's team conducted its study at eight different places in the Andaman and Nicobar islands throughout January.

The BBC's Omer Farooq reports that a worrying part of the conclusions is the revelation that stress on the Sumatra fault system has increased since the 26 December event.

Our correspondent said this indicated that another big earthquake was possible in the region.

But Dr Gahlaut explained that no one could say how big this earthquake would be and when exactly it would come.

Around 10,000 people were killed by the tsunami waves that hit the Indian mainland after the 26 December quake. Thousands more died in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.