Actress and BJP leader Locket Chatterjee on Tuesday filed a Right to Information (RTI) petition seeking details from the health department about the "VVIP dog" that a senior Trinamul leader had allegedly referred to the state's premier government hospital for dialysis. But the petition doesn't ask the most obvious question: whose dog was it?

In her petition to the public information officer in the directorate of health, Locket has sought answers to five questions:

? What type of pet it was?

? Who brought the pet to the hospital?

? Who made the ticket for treatment?

? Under whose control the treatment was started?

? What type of medicine was given to the pet?

Sources at SSKM and the University of Animal and Fishery Sciences said there was confusion over the ownership of the Golden Retriever that was to be taken to the state-run hospital from the veterinary centre on June 10. They said the dog had been referred to as "unknown" in the SSKM document that contained a list of medicines required for the proposed dialysis.

Petitioner Locket said the dog's owner could be identified once it was known who took it to SSKM. "I read the news of a dog being taken to SSKM Hospital for dialysis. I was shocked because the same machine that is used for human beings would be used for a dog. I went to SSKM on Monday and enquired about who brought the dog. It is clearly mentioned in the hospital's registry book that the dog is a VVIP but the owner's name is not there," she told Metro.

"Obviously the name of the owner cannot be disclosed because he or she is a VVIP. When I asked the hospital staff members about the dog's identity, they kept mum. But nobody denied that a dog was indeed brought for dialysis. I have filed the RTI so that we can find out who brought the dog to the hospital and why did the hospital authorities allow that to happen. This is shocking.... The questions laid down in the RTI (petition) would answer who got the dog to the hospital. Once we find that out, we will find the owner too," added the actress, who quit Trinamul to join the BJP in February.

The answers could take months to come, if they do at all. There are over 12,000 petitions pending in Bengal, which is about 70 per cent of the total papers filed, officials in the state information commission said.

Under the RTI Act, the information officer is supposed to forward a petition to the department concerned and ask it to provide the information sought by the applicant within a fortnight. The information officer gets a month to pass on the information to the petitioner.

"If the department fails to provide the information within a fortnight, the information officer will apprise the petitioner of it. The petitioner has the right to move court, leading to proceedings against the said department in accordance with the RTI Act," said high court advocate Subroto Mookerjee.

Doctors at SSKM and the University of Animal and Fishery Sciences in Belgachhia said senior Trinamul leader Nirmal Maji, who is also the president of the West Bengal Medical Council, had taken the initiative to arrange for dialysis on a Golden Retriever that had had surgery at the vet hospital.

Maji contested the allegation. "I am a doctor and was a kriti chhatra (good student) at Calcutta Medical College. I know very well that a dog can't have dialysis in a hospital for humans. I have nothing to do with it," he said on Tuesday.

Sources said that on the morning of June 10, Arpita Roychowdhury, associate professor of nephrology at SSKM, received information in the outpatient department that a dog was to be brought for dialysis.

Roychowdhury, the sources said, immediately tried to contact the head of the department, Rajendra Pandey, but was unable to do so because he was on leave. She then called Pradip Mitra, the then director of the Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (IPGMER).

Mitra was transferred a few days after the incident and subsequently put on compulsory waiting by the health department for refusing his new assignment as principal of Sagore Dutta Medical College and Hospital in Kamarhati.

Mitra said on Tuesday that nephrology head Pandey had sent him a text a few days before the dog-dialysis episode, asking him to provide "administrative guidance".

"Some people met me and I asked them whether the vet hospital was equipped for dialysis. When they said they didn't have any such facility, I assured them that we could provide technical guidance. There was no discussion about bringing the dog here," Mitra recounted.

He said Roychowdhury called him on June 10, informing him about the "request" and that she was not ready to allow a dog to be put on dialysis at SSKM. "I asked her to refuse on technical grounds and she did so."

Pandey insisted he didn't have any communication with anyone, including Mitra, about the dog dialysis.

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