The killer of Lindsay Hawker, the British woman who was strangled and buried in a bath tub in a Tokyo apartment, underwent cosmetic surgery in the past fortnight, according to Japanese police, a dramatic breakthrough which offers hope of a final resolution to a two and a half year manhunt.

A police spokesman in Chiba prefecture told The Times that Tatsuya Ichihashi, the 30-year old man in whose apartment Ms Hawker’s body was found, had plastic surgery at a clinic in the city of Osaka. According to a Japanese newspaper, images of a patient recorded at the clinic match photographs of Mr Ichihashi, an unemployed man who is believed to have strangled Ms Hawker at his apartment in February 2006.

The man was described as sporting stubble and wearing a dark knitted cap. His height and eyes match those of Mr Ichihashi, although the patient failed to return for a follow up appointment on 31 October. “We understand that this man did have an operation in Osaka,” a police spokesman who identified himself as Mr Murata, told The Times this morning .

If true, the sighting represents the most promising lead so far in a case which has baffled and humiliated Japanese police and caused intense anguish to Ms Hawker’s family from Brandon, near Coventry. In June the reward for information leading to Mr Ichihashi’s arrest was raised to 10 million yen (67,500 pounds), the largest ever offered.

A year ago, police sources told The Times that they suspected that Mr Ichihashi had committed suicide in some remote spot where he might never be found. Despite distributing tens of thousands of wanted posters, with simulated images showing him as he would look dressed in drag or with dyed hair, there has been no confirmed sighting of the suspect in 32 months.

Ms Hawker was 22 when she went missing after giving Mr Ichihashi an English conversation lesson in the suburban town of Gyotoku in Chiba prefecture, adjacent to Tokyo. When her friends found his telephone number on a piece of paper in Ms Hawker’s room, nine police officers visited Mr Ichihashi’s apartment. He ran away from them bare feet.

Afterwards, they found her naked body in the bath on the balcony. Her hands and ankles had been tied with plastic cord used to bind plants, and she was buried in horticultural soil. The post mortem showed that she had been brutally beaten.

Since then there have been many reports from members of the public who believe that they have seen Mr Ichihashi, none of which have led to his arrest. Police have made extensive enquiries in Gyotoku, as well as in an area of gay bars in Tokyo where, according to the Japanese media, he was a regular customer. Japanese detectives even mobilised detectives in the Philippines after a report that Mr Ichihashi had been seen in the resort town of Cebu, but this turned out to be a different person of the same name.

Police emphasised this morning that the sighting was not fully confirmed. :”This is just one out of 7400 pieces of information we have received,” said Superintendent Hiroyoshi Shinozuka.

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