I also found a useful tutorial at
https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/465/how-to-import-a-plain-private-key-into-geth-or-mist but i shall still send bounty to helpful suggestions once i am able to get the funds back.
Paste the key into a text file, save it to disk and use the path to that file with geth account import. Here are some example Windows instructions that might help:
Open Notepad
Paste key into notepad without any extra characters or quotations
Save the file as nothing_special_delete_me.txt at C:\
Run the command, geth account import C:\nothing_special_delete_me.txt
After successful import, delete the file at C:\nothing_special_delete_me.txt
If you do not have geth installed already, do the following steps after step 3, and the continue to step 4:
Open command prompt (cmd.exe).
Inside the Command Prompt, type the following command to go to the folder containing your Geth.exe file: cd c:\Ethereum-Wallet-win64-0-7-3\resources\node\geth (insert your correct path there)