Ram Boolchand Jethmalani (14 September 1923 – 8 September 2019[2]) was an Indian lawyer and politician. He had served as India's Union Law Minister and as chairman of the Bar Council of India. He has represented a sweep of cases from the high-profile to the controversial for which he has often faced severe criticism. He was the highest paid lawyer in the supreme court of india.
Ram Jethmalani obtained his LL.B.degree at the age of 17[3] and started practising law in his hometown (in today's Pakistan) until the partition of India. He married Durga Jethmalani and later, his second wife, Ratna Jethmalani.[4] The partition led him to move to Mumbai as a refugee and he began his life afresh with his family. He has two sons and two daughters. He announced his retirement from judicial profession on 10 September 2017. Parvati came to his life at the age of 90.
He was elected a member of parliament in the 6th and 7th Lok Sabha on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket from Mumbai. He has served as Law Minister of India and also as Minister of Urban Development during the prime ministership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee against whom he later contested election in the general elections of 2004 from Lucknow constituency. However, in 2010 he came back to BJP and was elected to Rajya Sabha on its ticket from Rajasthan. He has been criticised as being opportunistic because of this.[5]
Jethmalani was a well known face amongst the legal community in India. Even though his forte was criminal law, he had appeared in many high-profile civil cases. From 1993 to 1998, he was one of the lawyers who represented Harshad Mehta during the Harshad Mehta scam and the Narasimha Rao bribery case.[6] On 7 May 2010, he was elected as the president of Supreme Court Bar Association.[7][8]
Personal life
Jethmalani was born in Shikarpur, Sindh in the Sindh division of the then Bombay Presidency, now part of Pakistan in the family of Boolchand Gurmukhdas Jethmalani and Parbati Boolchand.[9] He got a double promotion in school and completed matriculation at the age of 13. He secured an LL.B. degree from Bombay University with a first class first at the young age of 17. At that time, the minimum age for becoming a lawyer was 21, but a special exception (resulting from an application that he made to the court contesting the rule regarding minimum age) allowed him to become a lawyer at 18.[4] He received LL.M. from Bombay University, since Sindh did not have a university of its own at that time.[1]
Jethmalani was married at an age of little above 18, to Durga, in a traditional Indian arranged marriage. In 1947, just before partition, he also married Ratna Shahani, a lawyer by profession. His family today includes both wives and four children – three by Durga (Rani, Shobha, Mahesh) and one by Ratna (Janak)[4][10]
Among his two sons and two daughters, Mahesh and Rani were supreme court lawyers. Mahesh is also a BJP leader and Rani was a social activist[11].
Career
As a lawyer
Ram Jethmalani started his career as a lawyer and Professor in Sindh before partition.[12] He started his own law firm in Karachi with his friend A.K. Brohi who was senior to him by seven years.[4] In February 1948, when riots broke out in Karachi, he fled to India on the advice of his friend Brohi and when he came to India in that day he had only a one paisa coin in his pocket and with that note he stayed in the refugee camp for few days.
Jethmalani fought his very first case at the age of 17 in the court of Sindh under Justice Godfrey Davis, contesting the rule regarding minimum age passed by the bar council of Sindh. In a talk at Algebra in June 2017, Jethmalani recounted his very first case fought in India as a refugee. A new law (Bombay Refugees Act) that had just been passed by the then chief minister Morarji Desai treated refugees badly and in an inhumane manner. The act treated refugees in a manner similar to convicted prisoners, allowing the state to relocate, sequester and question them anytime. Jethmalani file a case against this at the Bombay High Court, asking the law to be declared unconstitutional and won it.[13]
Ram Jethmalani next came to the spot light a decade later with his appearance in the K. M. Nanavati vs. State of Maharashtra case in 1959 with Yeshwant Vishnu Chandrachud, later to become Chief Justice of India. His later defence of a string of smugglers in the late 1960s established Jethmalani’s image as a 'smuggler’s lawyer'. Even back then, he would point out that he was only doing his duty as a lawyer.[14]
In 1954, he became a part-time Professor at the Government Law College, Mumbai for both graduate and post graduate studies. He also taught Comparative law at International Law at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.[12] He has also been the Chairman of Bar Council of India for four tenures both before and after the emergency. He was also a member of International Bar Association 1996. He has also been Professor Emeritus at Symbiosis Law School, Pune since 2003.
He took up a number of high-profile defence cases as lawyer[15] – people involved in market scams (Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh), and a host of gangsters and smugglers including the British citizen Daisy Angus who was acquitted of hashish smuggling after serving five years in jail. He also defended L. K. Advani in the Hawala scam. He was in the news for taking up the defence of Manu Sharma, prime accused in the Jessica Lall murder case; however, he failed to get Manu Sharma acquitted. He was to be defending Lalit Modi, former Indian Premier League (IPL) chairman and commissioner.[16][17][18]
Defended Indira Gandhi's alleged assassins, and challenged the medical evidence (PMR) given by T D Dogra on Indira Gandhi.[19] He later won the acquittal of Balbir Singh.[10]
Defence of Rajiv Gandhi's killers in Madras High Court in 2011[10]
On 9 September 2017, he announced his retirement from the legal profession.[29]
As a politician
Jethmalani contested as an independent candidate from Ulhasnagar supported both by the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Jan Sangh but he lost the elections.[4] During the emergency period of 1975–1977, he was the chairman of the Bar Association of India. He heavily criticised the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. An arrest warrant was issued against him from Kerala. It was stayed by the Bombay High Court when over 300 lawyers led by Nani Palkhivala appeared for him. However the stay was nullified by the habeas corpus judgment Additional District Magistrate of Jabalpur v. Shiv Kant Shukla[30] and Ram Jethmalani exiled himself in Canada carrying on his campaign against the emergency. He returned 10 months later after the emergency was lifted. While in Canada, his candidature was filed from Bombay North-West constituency. He won the election and retained the seat in 1980 general elections, but lost to Sunil Dutt of the Indian National Congress in 1985. In the 1977 general elections after the emergency, he ousted the serving Law Minister H. R. Gokhale from Bombay in the Lok Sabha elections and hence started his political career as a parliamentarian.[4] However he was not made law minister himself as Morarji Desai disapproved of his lifestyle.[14]
He became a member of Rajya Sabha in 1988. He became The Union Minister of Law, Justice and Company Affairs in 1996 in the Government of India led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. During the second tenure of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he was given the portfolio of Union Minister of Urban Affairs and Employment in 1998. But on 13 October 1999 he was again sworn in as the Union Minister for Law, Justice and Company Affairs. However he was asked to resign by the prime minister following differences with the then Chief Justice of India Adarsh Sein Anand and Attorney General of IndiaSoli Sorabjee. It is believed that Jethmalani never enjoyed the confidence of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He was inducted into the Cabinet on Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani's insistence.[31]
He had also announced his candidature for President of India stating "I owe it to the nation to offer my services" and launched his own political fronts, the Bharat Mukti Morcha, launched as a 'mass movement' in 1987 and in 1995 he launched his own political party called Pavitra Hindustan Kazhagam, with a motto to achieve "Transparency in functioning of Indian Democracy".[14]
In the general elections of 2004, he contested against Atal Bihari Vajpayee from the Lucknow constituency as an independent candidate. The Indian National Congress did not field their candidates in this election; however, he lost. Later on, in 2010, he was given a Rajya Sabha ticket by Bharatiya Janta Party from Rajasthan and he was selected. He is also a member of the Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice.[1] Jethmalani[32] is a person who is known to speak his mind. At a reception[33] hosted by the Pakistan High Commission for the Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar who was on a visit to India on 28 July 2011, the former law minister and Rajya Sabha MP Ram Jethmalani in the presence of the Chinese ambassador called China an enemy of both India and Pakistan and warned the Indians and Pakistanis to beware[34] of the Chinese.
In 2012, Jethmalani wrote to then Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) President Nitin Gadkari, accusing opposition BJP leaders of being "silent against the huge corruption" within the ruling UPA-II government, and stated that BJP "is sick".[36] Jethmalani's letter[37] became public on the internet. The same year, in November, Jethmalani wrote a letter to BJP leader L.K. Advani asking for the removal of Nitin Gadkari as the president of the BJP.[10] He cited the allegations of corruption levelled against Gadkari as the reason for his demand.[10] He had stated "When there are serious allegations against Gadkari, he should have stayed away, if only to raise his stature in the public eye,".[10] He publicly criticised Gadkari, even though Gadkari continued to be the BJP president. When Jethmalani was questioned if the BJP's parent body, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), that had been supporting Gadkari, was controlling BJP, Jethmalani had replied "I am sure the RSS is trying to influence the functioning of the BJP. After all, BJP leaders have grown up with the RSS,".[10]
In May 2013, BJP expelled Jethmalani from the party for six years, for having made anti-party statements.[38] In October 2013, defamation charges were framed against BJP seeking ₹50 lakh (US$63,000) as "null and void and damages" for making a statement that he was not a fit person to be member of the party.[39][37]
Jethmalani had also co-authored various legal scholarly books on fields of law such as criminal law, administrative law, and media law.[45]
Books on Jethmalani
Ram Jethmalani : The Authorized Biography by Nalini Gera (ISBN0670049360)
Rebel: A Biography of Ram Jethmalani by Susan Adelman (ISBN9386495074)
Death
Jethmalani died on 8 September 2019 in New Delhi at his home[46] According to his son Mahesh Jethmalani, he was not keeping well for the last few months; Ram Jethmalani breathed his last at 7:45 AM (IST), just six days short of his 96th birthday.[47]
