A member of the doomsday cult behind a deadly Tokyo subway gas attack and other crimes has turned himself in to police after 16 years on the run.

A Tokyo metropolitan police official said Makoto Hirata, a member of Aum Shinrikyo, conspired with several other members in kidnapping a notary official in 1995 and causing his death. The victim, Kiyoshi Kariya, then 68, was the brother of a follower trying to quit the group.

Hirata, 46, who had been on the run since the summer of 1995, turned himself in at a Tokyo police station and was detained early on Sunday, the police official said. Public broadcaster NHK said Hirata told police he wanted to "put the past behind him".

Aum Shinkrikyo is most famous for releasing sarin nerve gas in Tokyo's subway system in 1995, killing 13 people and injuring more than 6,000 in Japan's deadliest act of domestic terrorism. The cult had amassed an arsenal of chemical, biological and conventional weapons in anticipation of an apocalyptic showdown with the government.

Police say Hirata and other cult members kidnapped Kariya off a Tokyo street and held him at the group's tightly guarded commune at the foot of Mount Fuji. They allegedly used anaesthetics on Kariya to get him to talk about his sister, who escaped from the group after being pressed to donate her land. Kariya died from a drug overdose, police said. According to court testimony, cult members burned Kariya's body in an incinerator in the commune and threw the ashes in a nearby lake to destroy the evidence.

Hirata told police he only drove Kariya to the cult compound and denied other allegations, NHK said. He is also suspected in the near-fatal shooting of Japan's then top police chief, but the high-profile case was closed last year after the statute of limitations expired.

Hirata was one of the last three wanted cult members. The other two are still at large. Nearly 200 members of the cult have been convicted in the gas attack and dozens of other crimes. The cult's founder, Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, is awaiting execution after his death sentence was confirmed in 2006. Twelve other members are on death row; no one has been executed.

Hirata's arrest could help fill in missing pieces of the investigation. "As a member of the victim's family, I just want to know the truth," Kariya's son Minoru said in a televised interview. "I hope the new witness will help bring new revelations."

The cult, now renamed Aleph, once had 10,000 members in Japan and another 30,000 in Russia. It remains under police surveillance.