Ram Jethmalani was an Indian lawyer and politician known for his long career, high-profile defences and outspoken positions on professional and political issues.
About Ram Jethmalani
Ram Jethmalani was born on 14 September 1923 in Shikarpur, Sindh, then part of the Bombay Presidency in British India and now in Pakistan. He obtained his LL.B. at the age of 17 and began practising law in Shikarpur. After Partition, he migrated to Mumbai as a refugee and restarted his legal career there.
Early Life & Background
Born in Shikarpur, Jethmalani began his legal career at an unusually young age. His move to Mumbai after Partition marked the beginning of the career for which he would later become widely known.
Career / Rise
Jethmalani’s career spanned 76 years and included some of India’s most prominent criminal and commercial cases. He defended Indira Gandhi’s assassin and Rajiv Gandhi’s assassin, V. Sriharan, as well as stockbrokers Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh in stock market scam cases. He also defended Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin encounter case and Asaram Bapu in a sexual assault case.
He argued for the commutation of Afzal Guru’s death sentence in the Parliament attack case. Jethmalani publicly defended his choice of clients, saying that he decided according to his conscience whom to defend and that refusing a client on the grounds of presumed guilt was itself professional misconduct. He was variously known as a “Devil’s advocate”, “maverick lawyer” and “rebel”.
Notable Work / Turning Point
Born in Shikarpur: Early Life and Beginnings
Jethmalani was born on 14 September 1923 in Shikarpur, Sindh. He obtained his LL.B. at 17 and began practising law in Shikarpur before migrating to Mumbai as a refugee after Partition, where he restarted his career.
The Emergency: Exile of a Rebel
Jethmalani served as Chairman of the Bar Council of India from 1970 to 1976, a period that included the Emergency. He authored the Bar Council of India Rules, 1975, affirming a lawyer’s duty to defend clients fearlessly regardless of personal opinion or consequences.
In January 1976, he delivered a fiery anti-Emergency speech at a Kerala Bar Federation seminar in Palakkad. The District Magistrate of Palakkad subsequently issued an arrest warrant against him under MISA. Around 300 lawyers, led by Nani Palkhivala, secured a stay against his arrest from the Bombay High Court.
Jethmalani fled to Canada and then lived in political asylum in the United States for two years. After the Emergency was lifted, he returned to India and won a Lok Sabha seat from Mumbai on a Janata Party ticket in 1977.
The Nanavati Case
Jethmalani defended Navy officer K.M. Nanavati, who was accused in 1959 of killing his wife’s lover, Prem Ahuja. The case was tried before a jury, which acquitted Nanavati amid strong public sympathy.
The Bombay High Court overturned the jury verdict and the case was retried as a bench trial. Nanavati was convicted and later pardoned. The case is widely credited with launching Jethmalani’s career and was among the last jury trials held in India, contributing to the subsequent abolition of jury trials.
The Jessica Lal Case
Jethmalani defended Manu Sharma, son of a Haryana Congress leader, who was accused of murdering model and bartender Jessica Lal in 1999. Lal was shot at a Delhi bar after refusing Sharma a drink.
Sharma was sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2010, the Supreme Court upheld the Delhi High Court’s life sentence.
A Turbulent Political Life
Jethmalani was elected to the Lok Sabha twice from the Mumbai North-West constituency on a Janata Party ticket. He served twice as Union Law Minister under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He also served as Union Minister of Urban Development in the first Vajpayee ministry.
He resigned as Law Minister in 2000 after publicly attacking then-Chief Justice of India A.S. Anand and Attorney-General Soli Sorabjee. In the 2004 general election, he contested from Lucknow against Vajpayee himself.
His political affiliations shifted repeatedly. He was aligned with the Congress early in his career, and later associated with the BJP from 1980 to 1985 and again from 2010 to 2013, the Janata Dal from 1989 to 1993, Pavitra Hindustan Kazhagam in 1995, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal from 2016 to 2019. In 2013, he was expelled from the BJP for six years for “breach of discipline” after publicly challenging the party leadership.
Legacy / Current Standing
Jethmalani announced his retirement from legal practice on 9 September 2017, days before his 94th birthday, at a Bar Council of India event honouring incoming Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra.
He said that he was retiring from the profession but taking on a new role for as long as he was alive, with the intention of combating corrupt politicians who had been brought into positions of power. He described the governance under both the UPA and NDA governments as a “calamity”.
Ram Jethmalani died in New Delhi on 8 September 2019, aged 95.
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