A police official said the girl might have been raped and hacked to death. She used to live with her widowed mother at a rented room in the C-Block of the Upashahar area. Her mother Salma Begum, who works as a housemaid, found the minor girl missing since she returned from work Wednesday evening.

At about 10:00am yesterday, when some boys went to the roof for a cricket ball, they found the body covered in sand. It bore marks of injuries and blood stains. Police recovered the body at about 3:30pm and sent it to the Sylhet MAG Osmani Medical College morgue for post-mortem.