A man who was found dead on Saddleworth Moor had left his girlfriend of 30 years and disappeared to Pakistan without telling her, it has emerged.

The discovery of David Lytton’s body on a remote track in December 2015 prompted a huge police investigation and a 13-month hunt across the world for clues to his identity.

An inquest into Mr Lytton’s death was told yesterday that he had been in a long-standing relationship with a woman, but that in 2006 he suddenly moved to Pakistan without informing her.

The inquest heard from his long-standing girlfriend Maureen Toogood, from Blackheath, who met him in 1972 when she was 25 and working as a nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital.