The two other people arrested on suspicion of voluntary homicide and concealment of a corpse are adult children of Emile's grandparents, prosecutors said in a statement. The grandparents' lawyer, Isabelle Colombani, told AFP on Tuesday morning that she had no comment, having ‘only just heard’ about the development. Last year, some of the toddler's bones and clothes were found by a hiker near the home of Emile's maternal grandparents in the French Alps, where the boy had gone missing the previous summer.

But prosecutors at the time said that the remains offered no further clues as to the cause of Emile's death, adding that it could have been as a result of ‘a fall, manslaughter or murder’.

Tuesday's sudden twist, in a case that seemed to have gone cold, made headlines in France, where the search for Emile has been extensively covered by the media. When the toddler disappeared, dozens of journalists flocked to Haut-Vernet, often outnumbering the 25 residents of the tiny Alpine hamlet. (BBC)