Eminent lawyer and former Union Law Minister Ram Jethmalani passes away at 95

New Delhi, Sep 08: Senior Advocate Ram Jethmalani passed away on Sunday morning. He was 95. Ram Jethmalani breathed his last at 7.45 am at his official residence in New Delhi, his son Mahesh Jethmalani told PTI.

Mahesh and other close acquaintances said Ram Jethmalani was not keeping well for a few months. Ram Jethmalani passed away a few days before his 96th birthday on September 14, his son said.

Mahesh said his father's last rites will be performed in the evening at the Lodhi road crematorium here.

Born on 14 September 1923, Ram Boolchand Jethmalani is an eminent lawyer and politician. He had served as India's Union Law Minister and as chairman of the Bar Council of India.

He 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.

The lawyer has handled several high-profile cases like the 1962 Nanavati Case, the Emergency during Indira Gandhi's tenure, Indira Gandhi's assassination case, Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case and the Harshad Mehta scam case.

Ram Jethmalani obtained LL.B.degree at the age of 17. He married Durga Jethmalani and later, his second wife, Ratna Jethmalani. 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, of whom, Mahesh Jethmalani and Rani Jethmalani are also well-known lawyers. He announced his retirement from judicial profession on 10 September 2017.

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.

Jethmalani is a well known face amongst the legal community in India. Even though his forte lies in criminal law, he has 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. On 7 May 2010 he was elected as the president of Supreme Court Bar Association.