A seven-year-old girl was allegedly raped and murdered by a family friend on the Mumbai-Agra national highway, police said on Monday.
The girl's body was found near the Meenatai Thackarey stadium here on Sunday, police said.
The seven-year-old went missing from her house on July 28. Later, the victim's parents told police that one of their family friends, Yogesh Ramdas Khade, had come to their house on Saturday evening and gone out with the girl, they said. Based on the information, police arrested Khade, who is already booked on charges of theft at Panchvati police station here, they said.
Meanwhile, the girl's body was sent to Nashik Civil Hospital for postmortem, which confirmed that she was raped and then strangled, police said.