ABSTRACT
Located in the Bay of Bengal, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands cover an area of 8,249 sq. km. Attached to one another and broken at places, the archipelago consists of 306 islands and 250 nearly barren and often steep rocky outcrops. Much of these islands are summits of a submerged mountain range connecting the Arakan-Yoma ranges through the Coco and Preparis islands of Burma, to Banda Aech in Sumatra and the Lesser Sundas. These islands have six types of indigenous people with four Negrito groups in the Andaman and two Mongoloid groups in the Nicobar regions. The Negrito groups include the Great Andamanese, Onges, Jarawas and the Sentinelese. Established by the British in 1858, the islands were the first penal settlements in the country. Its strategic location for them was important in view of containing other colonial powers in the maritime region of South-East Asia.
