Anubrata Mondal at the programme in Bolpur on Thursday. Picture by Indrajit Roy

Anubrata Mondal, July 17, 2013: If any Independent candidate threatens you, set fire to his house. If police come to his rescue, hurl bombs at them

Anubrata Mondal, March 15, 2014: The soil of Ketugram is good, excellent for crops. But there are a lot of weeds here. Now that our government has provided enough lights… the area must be cleaned up soon

Anubrata Mondal, May 10, 2014: The CPM has killed many people... the rats that had taken shelter in holes are trying to come out. Fill up the burrows with earth. Give the rats cyanide

Anubrata Mondal, September 25, 2014: The earlier government did not stand by folk artistes…. Only the government headed by Mamata Banerjee has stood by them. We will stand by them

Blame it on the niggling knee pain or the high court order for a CBI probe into the Sagar Ghosh murder case, the Birbhum Trinamul chief today appeared mellow, almost sullen.

Attending his first public programme after yesterday’s court order, Mondal spoke for less than a minute and left.

Trinamul members noted that Mondal, whose inflammatory speech in July last year had preceded the murder of Ghosh, appeared unusually subdued today.

The Birbhum Trinamul chief, who gained notoriety by exhorting cadres to burn down the houses of party dissidents contesting last year’s panchayat polls as Independents and bomb police if they came to the rescue, spoke about folk artistes at the government programme in Bolpur today.

His speech was shorn of the gems that usually adorn his fiery public statements.

“Keshtoda (Mondal’s nickname) was not in his usual self. He was quiet and appeared grim. Be it government programmes or Trinamul events, he is usually very active — shouting slogans and gesticulating. But today, he spoke for less than a minute and avoided controversial comments. We are surprised,” a party vice-president in Birbhum said.

Mondal, who was called “khub bhalo chhele (very good boy)” by Mamata Banerjee, today arrived at the programme 50 minutes after it started. He sat next to the sabhadhipati of the Birbhum zilla parishad, Bikash Roychowdhury.

Both Mondal and Roychowdhury had been named in the FIR in the Sagar murder case. Their names, however, were not included in the chargesheet filed by the high court-appointed special investigation team.

Trinamul leaders who attended today’s programme could not recall such a brief speech by Mondal earlier.

“This is Keshtoda’s shortest speech. We can understand how much tension he is in,” a Trinamul leader said.

Or was it the knee pain?

Mondal was today seen limping and taking the help of a security guard to climb onto the dais. “Kestoda suffers from knee pain at times. The pain seems to have returned today,” a Trinamul leader close to Mondal said.

When reporters asked him about the CBI probe order, Mondal iterated what he had said yesterday. “The law will take its own course. I have faith in the judiciary.”

Govt files appeal

The state government today moved an appeal before the high court division bench of Justices Jayanta Biswas and Ishan Chandra Das against yesterday’s single-bench order to hand over the Sagar murder case to the CBI.

Justice Biswas, the senior judge on the bench, allowed the prayer. The case is likely to be heard tomorrow.