Ahmedabad: A six-year-old girl was allegedly choked to death by her school principal as she resisted sexual assault by him in Gujarat's Dahod district, media reports said.

The girl was a student of Class I. The principal then dumped her body in the school's compound and her bag and shoes near the classroom.

The accused, 55-year-old Govind Natt, has been arrested by the police.

Senior police officer Rajdeep Singh Jhala said the six-year-old girl's body was found on the premises of her school on Thursday evening, triggering panic in the area.

The post-mortem revealed that the girl suffocated to death.

An FIR has been registered into the case and a 10-member team to probe the matter. The girl's mother told the police that she used to go to school with the principal daily.

On being asked, the principal told the police that he had dropped off the girl at the school and left for some work.

The cops were not convinced and therefore examined Govind Natt's phone location details on the day of the incident. It was found that he reached school late that day.

When he was grilled further, the principal confessed to the heinous crime.

"He picked up the girl from her home at around 10.20 am. Her mother helped her get into the principal's car and saw her off. But she never reached the school. The school's students and teachers confirmed this. On the way to school, the principal tried to sexually assault her, and she started shouting," the senior officer was quoted as saying NDTV.

The principal allegedly choked the girl to stop her from shouting.

On reaching the school, the principal left the girl's body in his car and locked the vehicle.

"Around 5 pm, he dumps the body behind the school building and plants her school bag and shoes outside her classroom. He denied this initially, but we suspected him after the technical analysis," Jhala said.

Govind Natt, police have said, faces stringent charges under the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita and the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

State Education Minister Kuber Dindor called it a shameful incident for society and said: "I am pained by this. We were following this up for three days. We had told police to get to the bottom of this. The principal has been arrested. I condemn this incident and we will take steps to ensure such crimes are not repeated."