Police said the throat of Guddu Akbar Shaikh was slit with a sharp weapon and her body was wrapped in a plastic sheet and dumped in the thick growth of bushes near a stream which flows a little distance away from Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar school.

The incident came to light when some students of the school wandered near the stream and spotted the mutilated body. The panicked students informed their teachers who, in turn, alerted the policemen at Ramwadi police chowkey. Later, Guddu's parents identified the body as that of the missing girl.

Guddu's body was sent for a post-mortem at Sassoon hospital after the policemen prepared a punchnama report. The post-mortem was going on till late evening.

Tension mounted in Yerawada area after the recovery of the dead body. Several senior police officers including deputy commissioners Jagan Nath and Surinder Kumar, assistant commissioner S H Mahavarkar, inspectors Madhukar Mote, Vilas Jadhav and Surendra Patil rushed to the spot and brought the situation under control.

Police said Guddu's father is an autorickshaw driver. She had left her house on Wednesday evening to play with the children in the neighbourhood. Residents of the Gandhinagar slums claim to have seen her playing around 6 pm.

Guddu's anxious parents had approached the policemen at the nearby Parnakuti police chowky when the girl did not return home till late night. The police had started looking for her after filing a missing person's case.

Accidental death is now murder
The Chatuhshrungi police on Wednesday filed a case of murder pertaining to the death of a youth whose beheaded body was found lying at a secluded spot on the hillslope behind the Modern High School on Pashan Road.

The police had filed a case of accidental death after they found the mutilated body lying in a pool of blood around 9.45 am on Sunday. The youth's decapitated head was lying at a distance of about 200 feet from the body at the time. A blood stained blade was also recovered from the spot.

The police filed a fresh case under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code after the doctors from Sassoon hospital who had performed post-mortem on the body submitted their report saying the youth was murdered, inspector in-charge of Chatuhshrungi police station Mallikarjun Apune said.