A second group of Indian Jews claiming to be a lost tribe of Israel has emerged, claiming the right to return to their 'homeland', but there are doubts about the motives of the impoverished group.
About 300 Jews living in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh call themselves Bnei Ephraim - children of Ephraim - and believe they are descendants of Ephraim, leader of one of the lost tribes.
Their claim comes a year after northeast India's Bnei Menashe tribe won rabbinical recognition as one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel.
The Bnei Ephraim's oral tradition is that after wandering through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet and China for more than 1,600 years, in around 10th century AD they settled in south India where they still live as farm labourers.
They were forced to live as lowest-caste Hindus before being converted to Christianity by missionaries in the beginning of the 19th century.
In the 1980s, soon after Shamuel Yacobi a leader of the tribe visited Jerusalem, they stopped going to church and built a synagogue in Andhra Pradesh.
