Raj Thackeray after being granted bail. (Fotocorp)

Mumbai, Oct. 21: A Thackeray will spend a night in police custody.

Unlike in February this year, Mumbai police moved swiftly hours after chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, under pressure from the Centre and the Congress high command, promised “stringent action” against Raj Thackeray for allegedly inciting Sunday’s violence against north Indian migrants appearing for a railway exam in Maharashtra.

The chief of the militant, anti-migrant Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), along with his now estranged uncle Bal Thackeray, had managed to escape custody in spite of several pending cases of rioting. But Raj now has to cool his heels in the dingy lock-up of a Dombivali police station, 50km from here.

“Thackeray will spend the night in the Manpada police station lock-up. He will be treated like any other accused,” said Anil Dhere, police commissioner of Thane, where MNS workers thrashed and drove away exam candidates sleeping on a railway platform at 3.30am on Sunday.

At precisely the same time today, Raj was arrested from a government guesthouse in Ratnagiri, a Konkan coastal city around 400km from Mumbai.

The police have also renewed a gag order clamped on Raj in February. The order forbids him from addressing rallies, public meetings or news conferences.

A slew of charges, ranging from unlawful assembly to promoting enmity between groups, was slapped on Raj who had “dared the police” to arrest him and threatened to “set the state on fire” if he was.

In the cover of night, the MNS chief was driven to Mumbai — a journey of eight hours — where he was produced before a Bandra court around 2.45pm. His lawyers managed to secure bail for him in one case. But Raj found himself in the custody of Thane police, who had come armed with another warrant with similar charges for inciting violence in Thane and the twin suburbs of Kalyan-Dombivali.

At Dombivali, his lawyers requested the police to produce him before a night magistrate, but officials said he would now appear before a magistrate in Kalyan at 2.30pm tomorrow.

The police hoped they would make Raj spend more than one night in custody, even if he gets bail in Kalyan. Sources said a third case had been filed against him.

Besides, Mumbai police commissioner Hassan Gaffoor said a Vikroli court had been moved for cancellation of bail granted in February when Raj had made provocative comments against Amitabh Bachchan and north Indians.

In February, Raj was arrested but spent barely 60 minutes in court. The charges then too were similar.

In 2000, Bal Thackeray was arrested for writing a provocative editorial in the Sena mouthpiece but returned home after getting bail.

As news spread of the night arrest, MNS workers burned taxis and autos driven by north Indians, ransacked a toll plaza and forced shops to down shutters. The attacks spread to Dombivali and Kalyan in the evening.

But till late tonight, the scale of the violence was lower than feared. Mumbai’s lifelines — suburban trains and BEST buses — continued to operate, but went considerably empty as many people stayed indoors out of fear.

The Deshmukh government, an alliance of the Congress and the NCP, has been repeatedly accused of going soft on Raj and his party to cut into the Shiv Sena’s Marathi vote bank. But, sources said, the Centre, under pressure from its Bihar ally Lalu Prasad, told the government to act.