Madeleine McCann's family has played down a possible sighting of the missing child in India.

Local police are said to be investigating after a British woman spotted a six-year-old 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.

Portuguese detectives, helped by officers from Leicestershire Police, carried out a massive investigation into her disappearance.

But the official inquiry was formally shelved in July 2008 and since then no police force has been actively looking for the missing child, who would now be eight.

Scotland Yard launched a review of the original investigation in May after a request from Home Secretary Theresa May supported by Prime Minister David Cameron. Hundreds of possible sightings of the little girl around the world have been reported since she went missing, but so far they have all come to nothing.