After training his guns on Joint Police Commissioner K L Prasad over his remarks that "Mumbai does not belong to any individual", Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray is now gunning for former IPS officer Julio Ribeiro.

"Don't hurt our pride and self-respect. Mumbai does not belong to your father either," Raj said in a letter to Ribeiro, published in a leading Marathi newspaper on Sunday.

"How can one man, merely because he aspires to step into his uncle's shoes, hold the city to ransom? Is it not the job of the State to prevent violence and destruction?" Ribeiro had asked soon after Raj launched a broadside against Prasad.

Is it not the job of the police to stop him from promulgating his own laws and enforcing them with the help of lumpen elements? More importantly, does the State's authority run in this metropolis or is it the MNS that lays down the law and governs? the ex-Mumbai Police Commissioner had asked.

Replying to Ribeiro's charges, Raj said, "You have even branded my uncle, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, as a terrorist. If you are not a coward, why don't you go to the Damdami Taksal (a Sikh group) in Punjab and remove the portrait of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale."

Damdami Taksal, a Sikh religious group, has declared Bhindranwale a "martyr". Ribeiro is a former Punjab DGP.

Meanwhile, in an interview to another newspaper, Raj said Bal Thackeray no longer runs the Sena and indicated it was the Sena chief's son Uddhav who controlled the outfit.

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