Don, 12, does little to live up to his name. Now at the heart of an attempted murder investigation, he has dodged cameras with all the speed and agility of Usain Bolt. If Bolt were grossly unfit and had trouble moving.
The media has been criticised on Twitter and elsewhere for reporting on Don’s personality traits, which at last count were: overweight at about 35 kilos, and prone to napping and occasional barking when the air-conditioning is switched off. His dossier therefore proves Classic Labrador.
But it is the police and a Delhi judge that have turned Don into a focal point of the case that has Mr Bharti, the former Law Minister of Delhi, confronting charges of the attempt to murder Lipika Mitra, whom he married in 2010.
In her case, Ms Mitra has alleged that when she was seven months pregnant, Don, on his owner’s order, attacked her and bit her in the stomach and on her private parts.
After the police complaint or FIR was registered against Mr Bharti, the 41-year-old politician stood up the police for a series of appointments. In court, investigators told the judge they hadn’t been able to locate the law-maker – or Don, who they said was crucial to the inquiry given his alleged role in the reported domestic violence.
Don is prone to napping and occasional barking when the air-conditioning is switched off
In recent days, Mr Bharti has made multiple appearances at the police station handling his case in South West Delhi, pulling up with Don riding in the backseat of the Innova. Yesterday, with cameras on the duo, master ordered the dog, “Hullo, bite.” A call to action lost on Don, who barely looked up. “See, is he biting?” Mr Bharti asked the reporters filming the show-and-tell.
“No pet dog will attack a family member on the orders of another member,” Mr Bharti said, appearing on NDTV’s The Buck Stops Here on Wednesday night. “This is gross trivialisation of the matter…this is most unbecoming,” said Shazia Ilmi, who left the Aam Aadmi Party for the BJP, alleging that Mr Bharti is benefitting from Don as show-stealer. “It is a serious investigation. What the dog is capable of and not capable of – (it is) a very cute kind of rendition of domesticity is at play here to deflect really from the seriousness of the charges,” she said on NDTV.
Mr Bharti retaliated that it was not him, but the police who has turned Don into a headline, by referring to him in myriad court hearings.
The leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, notorious for leading a mob in a midnight raid on African women who he accused of prostitution and drug dealing, admitted to what he described as marital discord, but said conflating that with domestic violence is gross injustice to him. Don, like him, is innocent, he alleged, disclosing that he has audio tapes of the incident that his wife has referred to as a mauling by a vicious dog. “The tape is annexed with my application for bail,” he told NDTV, “where my wife is saying, ‘you have to throw your dog out….your dog is not well-behaved."” Mr Bharti said the tapes reveal that his wife exaggerated a scratch by Don as a vicious bite which he claims is proven when she refuses to see a doctor at his urging.
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