The Haryana Police on Wednesday said the body of a 19-year-old youth, who was named in the FIR as the alleged abductor in the savage rape and murder case of a 15-year-old Dalit girl from a village in Kurukshetra district, has been in a canal near Jyotisar.

The body was found late Tuesday night from the Bhakhra Canal.

Police said the body of the Class XII student was found in a decomposed condition and was identified by his parents from a tattoo on his arm.

Police had earlier launched a hunt to nab the accused who is alleged to have abducted the girl from Kurukshetra when she went to attend a tuition class.

The youth had been named as the alleged abductor in a complaint lodged by the girl’s family after the teenager had gone missing last week from her village in Kurukshetra after leaving home to attend a tuition class.

“On the complaint of the girl’s parents, we were treating the youth as a suspect for kidnapping. His body was found yesterday night from a canal near Jyotisar. Though there were no visible injury marks, the postmortem will reveal the exact cause of his death,” Kurukshetra SP, Abhishek Garg told PTI over phone.

The Class X student’s half-naked body was found on Saturday from near the bank of a canal in a village in Jind district after she had gone missing last Tuesday.

Asked about the allegations levelled by the girl’s family that local police did not immediately act upon the complaint lodged with them when the girl had gone missing, the Kurukshetra SP said the SHO concerned had been placed under suspension.

The girl was brutally assaulted, her private parts mutilated and some of the vital organs ruptured, police had said earlier.

The incident triggered nationwide outrage, with the opposition Congress slamming the Khattar government over its alleged failure to ensure safety and security of women.

Alleging complete breakdown of law and order machinery, the Congress had also asked the M L Khattar led BJP government to resign on moral grounds.

Police had earlier said they believe the number of accused in the crime could be more than one. However, with the body of the youth being found, the mystery of how the girl reached 100 km away from her home in Jind district where her body was found has further deepened.

“It is an ongoing investigation. We have also detained a few persons. Our teams are investigating the case from all angles,” he said.

The shocking incident came close on the heels of another incident last month, in which a six-year-old girl was brutally raped and killed in Haryana’s Uklana area in Hisar district.

Besides, an 11-year-old girl was also raped and killed in a separate incident in Panipat last week while a 23-year-old woman was allegedly kidnapped and then gang-raped in a moving car in Faridabad.

In the wake of recent incidents of rape and murders being reported from different parts of Haryana, DGP B S Sandhu yesterday held a meeting with senior officers of the police department and asked field units to accord priority to cases.