Bhubaneswar, May 17: The body of a newborn girl, badly mauled by a dog, was found in Unit VI area of the city this morning.

The incident sent shockwaves among the residents and brought back memories of August 2007 when the police had discovered 30 female foetuses dumped near Forest Park in glass jars.

Rama Chandra Sahu, the man who spotted the body, said he was returning home when he saw a dog dragging a bundle wrapped in red cloth from a dustbin near the boundary wall of a nurse training institute hostel. The place is barely 20 metres from Capital Hospital.

“My suspicion grew and I chased the dog which ran away dropping the bundle on the ground. I found there was a baby wrapped inside. The body was full of wounds with blood oozing out,” said Sahu. He added that the baby died within the next few minutes.

The baby had deep gashes below its ears and scars on its hands. “She was barely a day or two old. She might have been born at a nearby hospital or nursing home and her feet were covered with cotton,” he said.

Though Sahu informed the police immediately, they took more than an hour to arrive at the spot. The police took the body to the Capital Hospital, where it was kept at the morgue. Local residents alleged that several such incidents had come to their notice in the past six months.

“Six months ago two newborn girls were found dead and dumped in the same dustbin here,” alleged Sahu.

Authorities of Capital Hospital said that they did not receive any complaint about any missing baby from the hospital. Chief medical officer of Capital Hospital Nirmala Kumari Dei said the biomedical waste disposal system was used to dispose of dead remains of children.

“It is for the police to find out where this baby came from,” she said.