  Location of critical point and mapping the QCD phase boundary still exists as
one of the most interesting and studied problems of heavy-ion physics. A new
equation of state (EOS) for a gas of extended baryons and pointlike mesons is
presented here which accounts for the repulsive hard-core interactions arising
due to the geometrical size of the baryons. A first order deconfining phase
transition is obtained using Gibbs' equilibrium criteria and a bag model EOS
for the weakly interacting quark matter. It is interesting to find that the
phase transition line ends at a critical point beyond which a cross-over region
exists between hot-dense meson gas and quark-antiquark gluon matter. Our curve
resembles in shape closely with the predictions of the available lattice gauge
calculations and also reproduces the conjectured phase boundary.
