A RENTED house in York has become the centre of a murder probe as the identity of a man whose body was dumped in a North Yorkshire canal was finally revealed.

For more than four weeks the police investigation was hampered because they had no idea who the man was or even which country he came from.

But yesterday, he was finally named as Cai Guan Chen, a 38-year-old Chinese national, who had been living illegally in Britain since 2001. He also used the fake name Bing Lin.

He was found with severe head injuries in Selby Canal, near the A19, between Burn and Brayton on March 20 by an off -duty policeman who was fishing.

Police yesterday swooped on a semi-detached house in Heslington Lane in York, which neighbours said had been rented out to a group of Oriental people for several years and is believed to have been under surveillance by the investigation team for some time. Officers guarded the entrance to the curtain-less house – which still has a sign outside advertising it as available for letting – as forensic squads scoured the property for possible clues.

North Yorkshire Police say the murder victim may have been in the river for two or three weeks before his body was discovered, since when television appeals and a multi-lingual poster campaign for information have been launched and a computer-generated image of what he may have looked like released.

A force spokeswoman said “significant progress” had been made in the investigation into the man’s murder, saying: “He is believed to have lived in various locations around the UK and his last-known address was in the London area. The investigation is currently progressing and police are following a number of lines of enquiry.”

Residents living near the Heslington Lane house said at least three or four Oriental people had lived there until recently and the house had been staked out by police after the murder, with one neighbour saying: “It’s a bit of a shock in an area like this.

“I saw a police van, but didn’t know what was going on. It’s dreadful. I feel like we live in a bit of a bubble here, so I’m really shocked.”

Mike Easton, 62, who lives next door to the house, said: “I assumed it was a Chinese family living there, but people were coming and going all the time.”