Sources said a farm labourer found the body in a sugarcane field at Oviana village on Sunday afternoon. He informed the field owner, Tushar Patel, who later informed the police. Sub-Inspector P D Vaghela of Kamrej police rushed to the spot and took charge of the body, which was sent to the Community Health Care centre for postmortem. The police later cremated the body at Kholwad crematorium in Kamrej taluka, after the doctors said it was difficult to preserve the body.

On Monday afternoon, Ramesh Patel, an engineer with the Western Railway in Surat, whose daughter had gone missing since Thursday, went to Kamrej police station and identified the body as that of his daughter, Nikita, on the basis of the clothes, earrings, wristwatch and slippers found on the body. Patel was shocked to know that the body had been cremated.

Sources said that Nikita Patel (16), a student of Class X in Sadhna School and a resident of Railway quarters at Varachha, had left home on Thursday after informing her mother that she was going for tuition. When she failed to return till night, her father, with his friends, looked for her at the tuition class and also at her friends house. Finally, he approached Varachha police station and lodged a missing complaint.