New Delhi:  In what appears to be a case of female infanticide, the body of a new-born girl was recovered from a dump in the national capital on Thursday.

The body, discarded in a garbage dump in west Delhi’s Bharat Nagar area, had been bundled into a polythene bag. The bag caught the attention of locals when street dogs started dragging it.

People passing by located the bag and informed police.

“The body of the child was discovered early at around 8.30 am in the morning when a passerby in Delhi’s Bharat Nagar area suddenly saw street dogs barking and fighting over a packed polythene bag. On close inspection, parts of the newborn were seen,” a police officer said.

While the family or the identity of the child has yet to be ascertained, police officials said that some hospital documents have been found in the dump.

Police will wait for 72 hours before conducting a post-mortem to give time to the parents of the child to claim the body.