Shadow regions are known to experience lesser inundation by tsunami waves. Tsunamis and their dynamics have a significant impact on sediment transportation, resulting in reshaping the coastal geomorphology. The present study attempted to understand tsunami wave imprints that would benefit the knowledge about shadow zones. The work is a maiden attempt to understand the dynamics of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (IOT) waves in the Rameswaram shadow zone (East coast of India) formed by virtue of the geographical position of Sri Lanka. The field survey carried out based on existing data (satellite imageries and tsunami modelling) on the coasts between Olaikuda and Pisasumunai gives a signature of tsunami sediments and paleo high energy deposits. Both kinds of sediments show a characteristic trend of fining upward texture. The study reveals that dark pasty peat mud, with debris of marine organisms, lies unconformably over a dead coralline gravel bed/basement, which is a paleo-surface of erosion. Heavy mineral lags, intra-clasts, soft sediment liquefaction structures, Alcyonarian, an extinct soft coral, and microfossils characteristic of lagoonal and inner-shelf environments with broken, abraded, and dissolution-textured tests are found within sand layers. All these factors of their deposition by high energy waves. Scanning of sediment sequence up to 10 m depth by Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) has identified and traced the extension of subsurface high energy deposits and palaeo shoreline position enriched with garnet placer mineral akin to the 2004 IOT deposits found on the surface. The C-14 dating of unaltered gastropod shells extracted from the black mud layer has yielded 6480 ± 60 years BP. This indicates the sea level position during the fag end of the early Holocene period and the age of the coral basement over which the entire sediment sequence rests in the study region. The present study concludes that the swash-zone sediments were transported and overlain by tsunami sediments. Simultaneously, the dune sediments were liquified and deformed but were not significantly covered by the tsunami deposits.