The follwoing actions were taken to flush the device
1)blockdev --flusbufs /dev/mapper/mpath1
2)Remove entry mpath1 from /etc/multipath/bindings file
3)echo offline >/sys/block/<DEVICE NODES>/device/state
4)multipath -f mpath1
5)echo 1 >/sys/block/<DEVICE NODES>/device/delete
6)dmsetup remove -f mpath1
after doing the above the device nodes ie)/dev/sde ,/dev/sded etc etc are removed but still /dev/mapper/mpath1 file remains active and dmsetup info mpath1 shows the state to be still active
[root@xxxxscripts]# dmsetup info mpath1
Name: mpath1
State: ACTIVE
Read Ahead: 256
Tables present: LIVE
Open count: 1
Event number: 17
Major, minor: 253, 30
Number of targets: 1
UUID: mpath-360a98000572d2f6e686f695233696235
[root@xxxxxxscripts]#
[root@xxxxxscripts]# ls -l /dev/mapper/mpath1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 253, 28 Nov 1 2013 /dev/mapper/mpath1
[root@xxxxxxscripts]#