A former Scotland Yard detective claims in a new book that India holds the key to the mysterious disappearance of one of the UK's best known aristocrats.
The 7th Earl of Lucan vanished in November 1974, a day after the murdered body of Sandra Rivett, nanny to his three children, was found at the family home in London.
Now ex-detective Duncan MacLaughlin says he has collected enough evidence to prove that Lord Lucan fled to Goa and did not commit suicide after the brutal murder.
The Earl's car was found abandoned in the East Sussex port town of Newhaven, giving rise to the belief, shared by his wife Lady Lucan, that he drowned himself in the Channel.
But MacLaughlin says in the book, extracts of which were published on Sunday, that photographs of an elderly man resembling an English sadhu taken in 1991, and handed to him by a former drug dealer, display an unmistakable likeness to the Earl.
Mark Winch, who took the photos and tipped off MacLaughlin, also told him how he had become friendly with the man in the images while in Goa.
According to Winch, the bearded man claimed his name was Barry Halpin, a well-spoken gambler who loved to play backgammon, a pastime for which Lord Lucan was famous.
Halpin, who died in Goa in 1996, claimed to have arrived there in 1975, a year after Lord Lucan disappeared, another clue that MacLaughlin says put him on the trail.
Speaking at a London press conference, MacLaughlin, with co-writer William Hall, defended the evidence upon which the pair's book, called Dead Lucky, rests.
He said: "We have had no help from the Lucan family at all. I am an ex-detective. I do not have the back-up of Scotland Yard. But if I had, I am sure Lady Lucan would have helped me.
"To be sure it was him we needed DNA. No one will ever have that. It was a case of building up evidence slowly but surely.
"Lady Lucan has maintained for 29 years that her husband did the honourable thing. She is in her own little cocoon."
Hall commented, "This book is about trying to establish beyond reasonable doubt that this was Lord Lucan. We are claiming that we have overwhelming evidence.
"We have not got proof because there is no body."
Lord Lucan was officially declared dead by the high court in 1999.