Mukesh Pathak, the sharpshooter allegedly involved in the murder of two engineers in Darbhanga, used all the apps and mobile tricks at his disposal to evade police, investigators said on Tuesday.

Pathak used 375 SIM cards and 90 mobile handsets and disposed most of thembefore being arrested in Jharkhand on Monday. A senior officer associated with the case said Pathak contacted his associates through WhatsApp, WeChat and Skype, and chat with them from running trains making it difficult for the police to locate him by tracking mobile towers.

"During his six months and 17 days stay in hibernation, he used every possible trick to keep himself away from police reach after his name figured in the Darbhanga engineers' murder case in December last year. He used to destroy his SIM cards immediately after use," the police officer told The Telegraph.

Engineers with a private road construction company Brajesh Kumar and Mukesh Kumar were murdered on December 26 last year for not paying extortion money.

Eight police teams were engaged in the operation to trace Pathak, who was wanted in 17 cases of murder, extortion and atrocities against women. officers said Pathak, a graduate from LND College in Motihari, is adept in cloning SIMs. "It is because of his knowledge of electronic gadgets that he kept the security personnel on their toes for so long," said another police officer.

Pathak told the interrogators that he had escaped to Vindhyachal in Uttar Pradesh after December. "He (Pathak) would pay deities a visit after the successful execution of every plan," said a deputy superintendent of police, who was part of the teams assigned to nab him.

The STF personnel took him to Darbhanga on Tuesday. "Pathak is being interrogated by senior officers to ascertain his role in the engineers' murder case," said Darbhanga additional superintendent of police Dilnawaz Ahmad. Motihari deputy superintendent of police Pankaj Rawat said Pathak would be taken on police remand.

Pathak frequently changed his looks and travelled by train to avoid identification on his cross-country escape run. "It was tough to locate him at some particular place since most of the time he used to move by train," the officer said. "He never stayed in one place for more than a day and impersonated a priest, engineer or a journalist to protect himself from the police."

The Mehsi resident told officers that he collected Rs 25 lakh as extortion from a road construction company in Muzaffarpur district before escaping from judicial custody in Sheohar on July 22, 2015. He purchasd an AK-47 rifle with the money (which usually costs around Rs 5 lakh in the grey market).

Pathak's interrogators claimed he confessed that the rifle was used to murder Mukesh and Brajesh. Three shooters, including him, on their motorbike had committed the offence, the officer quoted Pathak as saying.

Additional reporting by R.N. Sinha in Motihari