Ram Jethmalani: Working to his own brief, the lawyer who held court for 70 years

Veteran lawyer and former Union minister Ram Jethmalani, possibly a lawyer with the longest and perhaps most controversial career in the country, passed away Sunday morning.

In 2015, then chief justice of India T S Thakur asked Ram Jethmalani, already a nonagenarian then, when he planned to retire. “Why is My Lord asking when I will die,” he retorted, as the courtroom erupted in laughter.

Veteran lawyer and former Union minister Ram Jethmalani, possibly a lawyer with the longest and perhaps most controversial career in the country, passed away Sunday morning. He was 95, and just two years into retirement from a practice going back to before Partition, during the course of which the non-conformist represented a long list of clients, from politicians accused of corruption and death row convicts to terror accused, accused in the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah in their legal battles. Jethmalani, who had not been keeping well for a few months, breathed his last at 7.45 am at his official residence on New Delhi’s Akbar Road, a few days before his 96th birthday on September 14. His last rites were held in the evening.

“In the passing away of Shri Ram Jethmalani Ji, India has lost an exceptional lawyer and iconic public figure who made rich contributions both in the Court and Parliament. He was witty, courageous and never shied away from boldly expressing himself on any subject,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted. Modi and Shah visited Jethmalani’s residence to pay their respects.

Born in Shikarpur (now in Pakistan) in 1923, Jethmalani was a brilliant student. He completed his matriculation by the age of 13 and began his career at 17 when he pleaded his own case against the minimum age rule for a lawyer to enrol at the bar, which was 21. Interestingly, he did not graduate in law but only obtained a two-year diploma — a condensed course introduced by Bombay University in 1939.

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