Singh, who is in 10 days’ police custody, has also told the police that he was going to surrender next year because he wanted to contest the elections.

The Special Cell had arrested Singh from Bhubaneswar on January 23. He was eluding the police from several states for the last more than two decades. According to the police, he ran a real estate business in the Orissa capital and stayed alone.

According to police sources, Singh and his men had kidnapped Rajiv Ranjan from Dhanbad (Bihar) in 2003. The body has not been found since. They said Brajesh Singh’s men killed Rajiv Ranjan to avenge the death of a gang member who was apparently killed by one of Ranjan’s associates.

The source said Singh has told the interrogators that his men had thrown Ranjan’s body in a drain — “but he does not remember the exact location”.

Ranjan’s father Suraj Deo Singh was also known to be a coal mafia in the coal belt of Dhanbad; police officials said he controlled big deals at one point and later formed a labourers’ forum called Janta Mazdoor Sangh there.

Singh has also said in his interrogation that he used to meet his associate some 400 or 500 kilometres from Bhubaneswar, the source said. “He never used a phone. He conveyed messages to his companions through other persons once a month and then finalised a rendezvous,” the source said.” Singh then drove to the meeting himself, the source added.

“None ever came to meet him in Bhubaneswar.” This, the police source said, was a way to ensure he handled all the money himself.

Another police official said on conditions of anonymity that a passport in the name of one Arun Kumar was found from Singh, though he admittedly never went abroad.