AAP lawmaker Somnath Bharti with his dog, Don, talking to reporters in New Delhi.
It was presumably with a measure of irony that politician Somnath Bharti chose the name "Don", connoting machismo and virulence for a Labrador Retriever, essentially the teddy bear of dog breeds.
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, prone to napping, and occasional barking when the air-conditioning is switched off. His dossier established this: Classic Lab.
But it is the police and a Delhi judge that have turned Don into a focal point of a major criminal 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.
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 lawmaker - 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 appearances at the police station handling his case with Don riding in the backseat of his Innova. Yesterday, with cameras on the duo, master ordered 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.
"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," said Shazia Ilmi, who left the Aam Admi Party for the BJP, 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.
Mr Bharti, as Law Minister, invited public outrage by leading a mob in a
midnight raid on African women who he accused of prostitution and drug dealing.
Don and he are both innocent in this case, he alleged, disclosing that he has audio tapes of the incident that his wife has described as 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 on tape, he offers to take his wife to hospital but she refuses. This, he said, is evidence that she exaggerated a "scratch" from Don as a life-threatening assault.
When asked why he secretly taped their quarrel, Mr Bharti said he was nudged by his training as a lawyer to record what he insisted is "marital discord...not a criminal affair."
He also acknowledged that his wife's first complaints of domestic violence were filed in the year they married, resulting in recurring counselling and mediation sessions.