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CALCUTTA, India, Sunday (Reuters)-India reported a new case of SARS on Sunday, three days after the World Health Organisation (WHO) said the country was free of the deadly flu-like disease.

Health officials in Calcutta, capital of the eastern West Bengal state, said a 25-year-old man who had returned from Hong Kong a week ago was suffering from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

"This is a SARS-positive patient and he is in an isolation ward," Asim Barman, the state's health secretary, told Reuters.

Another state health official said a medical report on the patient, who was found coughing and with a fever at Calcutta airport, was being sent to New Delhi and the WHO. India had reported 20 SARS cases based on laboratory tests before the WHO said on Thursday the country had no patients fitting its definition of the illness.

The WHO said it relied on symptoms to diagnose the illness as laboratory tests were not reliable.

SARS, which is widely believed to have originated in southern China, hit Hong Kong in March and was spread around the world by travellers.

It has killed more than 430 people and infected 6,500 globally.

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