UPDATED: Madeleine McCann’s family have this evening played down a possible sighting of the missing child in India.
Local police are said to be investigating after a British woman spotted a girl who appeared to resemble Madeleine in a market in the city of Leh in northern India on Friday night.
A French woman and a Belgian man who were with the girl insisted they were her biological parents but police took their passports to check, the Chandigarh Tribune newspaper reported.
It is understood that the private detectives hired by Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, to continue looking for their daughter are not currently planning to travel to India but will liaise with local police.
McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “The private investigators currently searching for Madeleine have been aware of this report from India for several days, and have been working to establish its veracity.
“So far unfortunately there is nothing to suggest that this sighting is any more credible than any of the many others we have had over the last four-plus years.”
Madeleine was nearly four when she went missing from her family’s holiday flat in Praia da Luz in the Algarve on May 3 2007 as her parents dined with friends nearby.
The family had spent their Easter holidays the month before here in Co Donegal – Gerry McCann’s parents are from the county.