NEW DELHI, Feb. 26 -- President Droupadi Murmu's visit to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands triggered a debate on the development initiatives in the Indian archipelago. Expressing serious concerns over the development programs in some parts of the islands, a group of international genocide experts have written to the Union government in New Delhi with a warning that its plans to turn an un-contacted tribe's island into a mega-port city will wipe them out. Thirty-nine genocide scholars argued that around 300 Shompen hunter-gatherers, two-thirds of them uncontacted until today, will face extinction if New Delhi goes ahead with the development plans.

Shompen people are one of the most isolated tribes on Earth, and they live in the dense rainf...