OSAKA (Kyodo) Police have arrested the mother of a 9-year-old Osaka Prefecture girl who had not been seen since March and two male acquaintances after one of the two led them to the child's body buried in a Nara mountain graveyard.

Police suspect that Seika Matsumoto had been abused and that child welfare authorities were not alerted to her plight even though neighbors and her school suspected something was amiss.

Police planned Friday to perform an autopsy on Matsumoto, who was a fourth-grader at an elementary school in Nishiyodogawa Ward, Osaka.