Panaji, Apr 14 (IANS): Instead of banning Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik, the Goa government should first ban Nigerian and Russian mafias operating in the state, Shiv Sena's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut said on Wednesday.

"Muthalik should not be banned in Goa. There are many others from outside, who can be from the Nigerian and Russian mafias, who need to be banned before Muthalik is... Even Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Kanhaiya Kumar is moving around the country," Raut told reporters here after taking stock of Sena's organisational affairs in Goa.

Last month, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government in Goa extended the ban on Muthalik, first imposed in 2014.

Sene courted controversy after its activist allegedly attacked young men and women in a pub in Mangalore in 2009 for, what they claimed, was insult to Indian culture.

In 2014, Muthalik said he would open Sene units in Goa and try to steer the former Portuguese colony away from "Western influences".