Police said the woman's body was dumped a few kilometres away from the murder spot.
A teenage girl from Kerala was murdered in a forested area in neighbouring Tamil Nadu allegedly by a man on Tuesday night. The accused, a worker at an automobile service centre, has been arrested and handed over to the Kerala police.
According to police, the accused - who is in his mid-twenties - was familiar with the victim and had propositioned to her on several occasions. On Tuesday, he allegedly made off with a car delivered to his automobile unit for servicing and picked the girl up from her school in Ernakulam. She was then driven to a wooded area in Tamil Nadu, located close to the Thrissur border.
Police said the accused allegedly killed the girl and dumped her further down the road near the Valparai tea plantations. The body was found early on Wednesday.
The accused was handed over to the Kerala police after his arrest. Police personnel in both the states had been tracking the two on the basis of the missing car's details.
Police quoted the girl's family as saying that the accused had tried to blackmail her repeatedly in the past, sometimes with morphed photographs. Police are likely to question the accused soon.