A skull found in a Kent pub should be repatriated and buried in India because it belongs to a man wrongly accused of murdering European missionaries, an academic believes.

The skull was owned by a couple who inherited it after relatives took over the The Lord Clyde pub and discovered it in a back room in 1963.

The couple passed it on to Dr Kim Wagner, an expert in imperial history at Queen Mary University, London, who began to investigate its provenance.

He was helped by the fact that the skull came complete with a note which claimed to tell its history.

The rolled-up, handwritten scrap of paper was inserted into an eye socket and said it was the skull of Havildar "Alum Bheg," a leader in the mutiny of 1857 who murdered a group of missionaries and a doctor near Sialkot, which is now in Pakistan.

It said he had been a "principal leader in the mutiny of 1857 & of a most ruffianly disposition.

"He took possession (at the head of a small party) of the road leading to the fort, to which place all the Europeans were hurrying for safety.

"His party surprised and killed Dr. Graham shooting him in his buggy by the side of his daughter. His next victim was the Rev. Mr. Hunter, a missionary, who was flying with his wife and daughters in the same direction.