The body of a 16-year-old girl, who had been missing for three days, was found with her throat slit and face burnt with acid in a field abutting Prayagraj-Gorakhpur highway near Phulpur on Saturday morning, the Prayagraj police said, adding a murder case was registered against the incident.
The minor girl, a resident of Mailahan in the Phulpur area of the district, left home on August 16 to water her family’s fields and had been missing since. A missing person’s report was lodged by her father at the Phulpur police station on August 18, the police added.
Phulpur station house officer (SHO) Yashpal Singh said the owner of a field in the neighbouring Arvasi Bahadurgarh discovered the body and raised an alarm.
Senior police officials, including DCP (Trans-Ganga) Abhishek Bharti, ACP Manoj Kumar Singh and SHO Singh reached the spot, and a forensic team and the dog squad were pressed into service. The body, meanwhile, was sent for a postmortem examination.
“In his complaint, the victim’s father has raised suspicion on a youngster from the nearby Arvasi village. The youth has been detained for questioning,” the SJP added.