Kate and Gerry McCann have concluded the child spotted in India apparently resembling missing Madeleine is not their daughter after they saw photographic evidence, it has emerged.

Local police were said to be investigating after a British woman spotted a six-year-old girl who resembled 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 private detectives hired by Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry, to look for their daughter are not planning to travel to India.

McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: ‘Kate and Gerry do not believe the child seen in India was Madeleine. They have seen photographic evidence and concluded that it was not her.

'We remain grateful for people's vigilance around the world. Madeleine is still out there and the search for her very much continues.'

Madeleine, from Leicestershire, who would now be eight, went missing from her family’s holiday flat in Portugal in May 2007.