Maninder Pal Singh Kohli, the prime suspect in the 2003 rape and murder of 17-year-old Hannah Foster, was due to fly out of India for Britain later in the day, the official said.

"He was handed over to a team of three people from the British police in the morning," Sunil Gupta, spokesman of New Delhi's Tihar jail, told AFP.

The move followed a court order on Friday clearing the way for Kohli's extradition, which he has been fighting in Indian courts.

He fled southern England days after being named as a suspect, and was arrested in India's remote northeast in July 2004, after Foster's parents travelled to India and offered a reward for information leading to his arrest.

In 2005, Kohli, who worked as a truck driver in Britain, admitted in interviews with two Indian television channels to killing the girl, but later retracted the comments and has been fighting extradition.

In a ruling on June 8, a lower court judge said that there was "a strong case" against Kohli, citing forensic and medical evidence from the British police investigation.