Neil Island, officially known as Shaheed Dweep, is an island of the Andaman Islands, located in Ritchies Archipelago. It belongs to the South Andaman administrative district, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The island lies 36 km northeast from Port Blair. Neill Island was named after British Brigadier general James Neill, who had fought on the side of the British East Indian company in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. In December 2018, it was renamed as Shaheed Dweep as a tribute to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose had hoisted the Indian flag at Port Blair on 30 December 1943 and proclaimed the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as territories liberated form British rule. He had subsequently named Andaman Island as Shaheed and Nicobar Island as Swaraj. Shaheed Dweep, then Neill Island, was uninhabited until the arrival of settlers in the late 1960s. Like Swaraj Dweep, then Havelock, the vast majority of settlers at Shaheed Dweep were refugees from erstwhile East-Pakistan, following the exodus of Hindu Bangladeshis prior to that country's war of independence in 1971. On 30 December 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Neill Island would be renamed as Shaheed Dweep.
