Amroha (Uttar Pradesh), Feb 25 (IANS): In a shocking incident, a man was killed in a hit-and-run case in the Gajraula area on the Delhi-Lucknow highway and his body mutilated repeatedly for over 12 hours as hundreds of speeding vehicles ran over it, police said on Tuesday.

The unidentified man was probably fatally knocked down by some passing vehicle on Sunday night. No one noticed the body in the dark, with each passing vehicle battering the corpse till it was almost reduced to smithreens.

Sources said there were several police response vehicles deployed in the area but none noticed the body lying in the middle of the highway.

After police was informed by passersby on Monday morning, they tried to retrieve whatever was left of the corpse by virtually scraping it off the road. Policemen said that they determined the victim's gender from the blood-splattered clothes.

A post-mortem was later conducted on the mutilated body by doctors at a government hospital.

"We still have no clue to his identity," a police officer said.

Gajraula police station SHO Jaiveer Singh said: "The body was crushed badly. It was very difficult for us to retrieve whatever was left of the body. It was sent to the district hospital for autopsy. DNA samples of the body have been preserved for identification of the victim in future."