Deputy Inspector General of Police Aseem Arun told reporters here that he has instructed that the teeth of the dead should be preserved for DNA identification later, should some relative or acquaintance turn up to claim the remains.

 Bodies will also now be properly packed in polycovers by policemen with gloves and masks on and transported in a special police vehicle to the post-mortem house in SN Medical College for autopsy.

 The state government has fixed `1,600 for the last rites of an unidentified body.

 "Earlier, the bodies were handed over to a rikshawpuller with a small amount of money and occasionally some liquor bottles to dispose of the body," a functionary of voluntary agency Shri Nath Ji Nishulk Jal Sewa alleged.

The bodies were then thrown away in the Yamuna river, he added.

Shri Nath Ji Nishulk Jal Sewa had some years ago arranged for a decorated rickshaw called 'moksha vahan' (spiritual carrier) to take the bodies to the Yamuna bank for last rites.