NEW DELHI: The police on Saturday morning found the body of a woman that had been dumped in Sonia Vihar in northeast Delhi, the third such recovery in five days, sparking speculation that a serial killer may be at play.

Police denied any such possibility although they are still fumbling for clues in all three cases, the other two being the body of a woman found near

and a burned body near

.

The body found on Saturday was badly disfigured and decomposed. Police said the woman was probably in her late twenties or early thirties and that her throat had been slit. Her face was badly smashed, probably with stones, to conceal her identity, sources said. The possibility of sexual assault has not been ruled out, but the police said they would comment only after the medical reports came in.

Senior officers said the woman may have been murdered elsewhere and dumped at the isolated forested area close to the police training college in

. It was first noticed by a passer-by around 7am.

, DCP,

, said a murder case had been filed and that they were analysing

persons records.

Meanwhile, the police have not made much headway in the earlier two cases. Investigations into the Nehru Place case involving the halfnaked body of a woman have come to a near halt after the police found out that the deceased had a child and that her husband — whose name was tattooed on her right hand — was previously married to a woman who stays in Rohini Sector 26. Police sources said they were still joining the dots and connecting the events to establish a proper sequence of events.

In the LNJP Hospital case, the police are yet to identify the body. Sources said that while the upper half of the body was decomposed, the lower half was not.

A source said that in all the three cases the bodies appeared to have been dumped from moving vehicles at carefully chosen isolated places. Sexual assault could not be ruled out, it said, adding that it was however difficult to connect the three cases as of now.