A top mafia boss who has spent the past five years in hiding has been found hidden in a secret compartment inside his Calabrian home, Italian police said. 

Antonio Pelle, believed to be the head of the Pelle-Vottari clan active in Reggio Calabria, was found in a hideout accessed by a secret entrance between his bathroom and his son's bedroom. 

Pelle, 54 and known as La Mamma, had been serving a 20-year sentence for organised crime activities and arms and drugs trafficking when he escaped from a hospital in the town of Locri back in 2011. He had been moved to hospital from prison after suffering dramatic weight loss which investigators subsequently determined he had induced intentionally through medication. 

Italian police say the organisation Pelle leads is responsible for the murder of Maria Strangio on Christmas Day 2006, with the murder subsequently leading to a feud with the Nirta-Strangio mafia clan. The feud culminated in the massacre of six people in an Italian restaurant in Duisburg in 2007. 

The mafia boss is no stranger to confounding hideouts. At the time of his first arrest, in October 2008, police had found him hiding in a highly developed bunker in the Reggio Calabria countryside, with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and even a small section for him to grow cannabis in.