HANNAH Foster’s alleged killer was using a false name and had married and set up home with another woman in India, a court heard.

Maninder Pal Singh Kohli was calling himself Mike Davis as he made a new life in the northern Indian town of Kalimpong.

He had also married a woman, Bharati Das, and was living with her before he was extradited to the UK to face charges over Hannah’s abduction, rape and murder.

The revelations were made at Winchester Crown Court by former Gurkha Roshan Gurung.

He said he came to know Mike Davis when a Red Cross vaccination team wanted to set up a clinic in Kalimpong where Mr Gurung was living with his family in 2004.

It was being led by a man called Obi Das – the father of the woman Kohli later married.

Mr Gurung,who retired from the Army in 2002, told jurors that Kohli had been “fairly friendly” and they had talked about going for a beer together.

When they first met, Kohli had told Mr Gurung how he came from Southampton in England and that he used to drive a lorry. He had a clean shaven head and face.

The court heard how Kohli told Mr Gurung about his marriage after it had happened, but had not invited him to the ceremony.

Mr Gurung told the court that some time later he saw a man’s picture on television which he believed to be the man he knew as Mike Davis.

He added: “At that time,when there was the news, it was a disguised picture. He had a beard and a head scarf. I did think it was Mike Davis because of his eyes. I didn’t tell anyone because I wasn’t 100 per cent sure.”

The court was told how another picture of Kohli, then the prime suspect wanted for Hannah’s murder, later appeared in an Indian national newspaper. Mr Gurung said he recognised it, adding: “it was a recent photograph of him. It was Mike Davis”.

Jurors were told how Mr Gurung later called a special telephone hotline set up to take calls concerning the murder of Hannah and, in 2005, he received a share of the reward money offered to find Kohli.

Kohli, 40, denies abduction, false imprisonment, rape and murder of Hannah, 17, whose body was found in Allington Lane, West End on March 16 ,2003.

Proceeding