Ram Jethmalani

Ram Boolchand Jethmalani (14 September 1923 – 8 September 2019) was an Indian lawyer and politician.

He served as India's Union minister of law and justice, as chairman of the Indian Bar Council, and as the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.

Jethmalani obtained his LL.B. degree at the age of 17 and started practising law in his hometown, Shikarpur, until the partition of India.

The partition led him to move to Mumbai as a refugee where he began his life and career afresh.

Jethmalani was born on 14 September 1923 in Shikarpur, Sindh in the Sindh division of the then Bombay Presidency (today a part of Pakistan) to Boolchand Gurmukhdas Jethmalani and Parbati Boolchand.

He got a double promotion in school and completed matriculation at the age of 13.

At the age of 17 he secured an LL.B. degree from the Bombay University with a first class distinction.

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 the age of 18.

He received his LL.M. from Bombay University, since Sindh did not have a university of its own at that time.

Jethmalani married his first wife, Durga, in a traditional Indian arranged marriage, around the age of 18.

According to his son Mahesh Jethmalani, he was unwell for the last few months and died at 7:45 am (IST), six days short of his 96th birthday.

Ram Jethmalani started his career as a lawyer and Professor in Sindh before partition.

He started his own law firm in Karachi with his friend A.K. Brohi who was senior to him by seven years.

In 1947, just before partition, he married his second wife, Ratna Shahani, a lawyer by profession.

His family includes both of his wives and four children – three by Durga (Rani, Shobha, Mahesh) and one by Ratna (Janak).

Among his two sons and two daughters, Mahesh and Rani have been supreme court lawyers while Mahesh is also a BJP leader, and Rani a social activist.

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 INR 10 in his pocket and with that note he stayed in the refugee camp for few days.

Jethmalani fought his 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 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 the Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

He has been the Chairman of Bar Council of India for four tenures, before as well as after the emergency.

Jethmalani later came to be noted for his appearance in the Nanavati case in 1959 with Yeshwant Vishnu Chandrachud, who later to become the Chief Justice of India.

His defence of a string of smugglers in the late 1960s established his image as a "smuggler’s lawyer", to which he mentioned that he was only doing his duty as a lawyer.

Jethmalani was awarded the Human Rights Award by World Peace Through Law in 1977.

He authored books such as Big Egos, Small Men; Conscience of a Maverick; and Maverick: Unchanged, Unrepentant; among others.

He also co-authored legal scholarly books on different fields of law.

In 1996, he also became a member of the International Bar Association.

He has served as the Professor Emeritus for Symbiosis International University law schools.

He also served as the union minister of urban development in the first Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministry, against whom he later contested election in the 2004 Indian general elections from the Lucknow constituency.

He later returned to BJP in 2010, and was elected to the Rajya Sabha on its ticket.

In 2010, he was also elected as the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.

During his career he was involved in a number of high-profile defence cases as lawyer – 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 announced his retirement from judicial profession in 2017.

Throughout his political career, Jethmalani worked for improving the relations between India and Pakistan, owing to his experiences as a refugee post-partition.

He was elected as member of the Lok Sabha twice, on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tickets, from the Mumbai North West constituency.

In a talk at Algebra in June 2017, Jethmalani recounted his first case fought in India as a refugee.

The newly introduced Bombay Refugees Act treated refugees in an inhumane manner, against which Jethmalani filed a case in the Bombay High Court, praying for the law to be declared unconstitutional; a case he won.

Jethmalani died on 8 September 2019 in New Delhi at his home at the age of 95.