Jarawa Tribe
A tourist videotapes a member of the Jarawa tribe dancing in India’s south Andaman Island. Jarawa women are falling victims of sexual exploitation, new reports reveal. Survival International

The Jarawa tribe in India's south Andaman Island is on the brink of vulnerability to sexual exploitation and abductions by the outsiders.

Seven men have been arrested recently in connection with the alleged kidnap of eight Jarawa women after the members of the tribe reported the eight women missing, local media reports said.

According to Survival International, an organisation working for tribal people's rights worldwide, the report is the latest in a spate of recent reports suggesting sexual abuse of Jarawa women.

Jarawa women are also threatened by the illegal supply of alcohol by poachers invading the Jarawa's forest, the habitat of the tribe.

"Illegal poachers use the Jarawa women to help with hunting and gathering inside the tribe's reserve. There are strong indications that the women are being lured by alcohol, and that sexual exploitation occurs on a regular basis," the London-based organisation said in a statement.

Illegal human safaris on the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR), which cuts through the restricted Jarawa reserve, have exposed the Jarawas to outsiders who could bring them disease, illness and even death.

These indigenous people are also put at life-threatening risk of acquiring infection from contact with the outside world through goods such as alcohol, food items and clothes offered by the outsiders.

In 2012, a video footage released by British newspaper, The Observer, showing Jarawa women being forced to dance naked for tourists caused much uproar over the height of the inhuman treatment of the tribal people by the outsiders.

"These men should never have even been on Jarawa land. There's a simple solution: the authorities must put an end to poaching and enforce the boundaries of the reserve. It's the only way to stop Jarawa women being exploited by these predators," Survival's director, Stephen Corry, said.

The Jarawa are the direct descendents of man's earliest ancestors who migrated from Africa 65,000 to 70,000 years ago. They were eventually stranded on the islands by rising seawater.

A DNA analysis in 2005 suggested that the Jarawa, estimated to be just about 320 in number, are one of the four Negroid tribes surviving on the Andaman.