Cuttack, March 20: Police hope to extract vital information by interrogating Bhola Bhagat, the key associate of gangster siblings - Sushant and Sushil Dhal Samant.

Bhagat, the right hand of the gangster brothers, was nabbed from Kanpur railway station by a special joint team of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar police and Uttar Pradesh police yesterday. He was nabbed while he was trying to escape to Rajasthan in train.

Senior officials revealed that Bhagat's picture was shared by Cuttack-Bhubaneswar police with their Uttar Pradesh counterpart after the cops here got vital leads about his journey to Rajasthan.

The arrest of Bhagat assumes significance as he could provide more evidence against the gangster brothers in connection with the murder of Dipu Mallick and Om Prakash Swain. The brothers are now lodged at Jharpara and Balasore jails respectively.

Senior officials said a special team had been formed to extract information from Bhagat.

"We will start the interrogation of Bhagat after he arrives in Cuttack tomorrow," said deputy commissioner of police Sanjeev Arora.

A detailed strategy has been chalked out to extract credible information from Bhagat.

He had gone absconding from his Badambadi residence shortly after the arrest of the gangster brothers on January 29.

A raid was conducted at the residence of Bhagat at Badambadi last month, but the cops could only manage to seize business-related documents and other fake identity proofs of the siblings.

Sources said Bhagat had earlier taken refuge in Calcutta and five other states after the arrest of the brothers.

The residence at Pokariput in Bhubaneswar from where Sushant and his younger brother Sushil were arrested was taken on rent by Bhagat from a city-based lawyer.

Bhagat, a scrap businessman, had come in contact with the gangster brothers in 2006 and later was active in controlling the entire extortion and other business activities of the Dhal Samant brothers in the city.

Jena sent to jail

Congress leader and former MLA Ramesh Jena was sent to Berhampur Circle Jail on Sunday as his police remand ended. Police had taken Jena on five days' remand for interrogation for the second time on March 13.

He was arrested in Bhubaneswar on March 7. However, the police took Ramesh's father Arakhit Jena and Congress councillor R. Murali Mohan on seven days' remand today for interrogation.

Berhampur police had taken Santosh Behera who was arrested in Bhubaneswar earlier on seven days' remand for interrogation from March 19.Police to interrogate gangster aide