Kathmandu, Aug 7 - Moving quickly after a 59-year-old man claimed to have had plotted the assassination of Nepal's King Birendra and nine more members of the royal family in the tightly guarded pagoda palace in Kathmandu eight years ago, Nepal police arrested Tul Prasad Sherchan in a swoop around midnight Thursday.

Sherchan was going to a meeting in an undisclosed place when the motorcycle he was riding pillion was stopped by police in the capital and he was marched off.

His companion and media advisor told IANS he has been kept in the Hanumandhoka police station.

The arrest came a day after Sherchan walked into a club frequented by journalists and claimed to have had plotted the massacre in June 2001 that is regarded as the point when monarchy started crumbling in the world's only Hindu kingdom.

Dressed in traditional Nepali clothes and a traditional cap, the bespectacled man, who looked to be in his 60s, told the stunned gathering Wednesday that he was Tul Prasad Sherchan, chief of the intelligence bureau during King Birendra's reign. Sherchan said he had planned the massacre in 1975, and the plot was hatched in London.

He also claimed he had tapes to bear out his claim.

Asked what made him plan the destruction of the royal family, he claimed he had information that the members of the royal family had siphoned away money received as aid from foreign donors.

Had that 'incredible' wealth been invested in Nepal, it would have transformed the economy of a nation that is among the poorest in the world, the man said.