Рам Джетхмалани: Өмір және мансап жолы

Indian lawyer and politician (1923–2019)

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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. Jethmalani died on 8 September 2019 in New Delhi at his home at the age of 95. 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. 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. 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. 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 was to be defending Lalit Modi, former Indian Premier League chairman and commissioner. Some of the cases Jethmalani appeared in include — the defence of Indira Gandhi's alleged assassins, challenging the medical evidence deposed of Tirath Das Dogra, a forensic expert of AIIMS, on record; defending Harshad Mehta in a stock market scam and the Narasimha Rao bribery case; defending Ketan Parekh in a stock market scam; appearing in a case involving Mumbai mafia gang leader, Haji Mastan; appearing for Sanjay Chandra's bail in the 2G spectrum case; appearing for Kulbhushan Parashar's bail in the navy war room leak case; defending Kanimozhi in the 2G spectrum case; appearing in Yeddyurappa's case on an illegal mining scam; defending A. G. Perarivalan, T Suthendraraja alias Santhan, and Sriharan alias Murugan, all convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case; defending Shiv Sena in Krishna Desai's murder; defending Asaram Bapu in the Jodhpur sexual assault case; defending Lalu Prasad Yadav in the supreme court and appearing for his bail in the fodder scam case, on 13 December 2013; appearing for AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa, convicted in a disproportionate assets case by the Karnataka High Court; and, appearing for AAP president Arvind Kejriwal, in a defamation case filed by Arun Jaitley, amongst others. On 9 September 2017, he announced his retirement from the legal profession.

Actor Mithilesh Chaturvedi portrays Jethmalani in Scam 1992, a Sony LIV's original web series based on 1992 Indian stock market scam of Harshad Mehta. Actor Sumeet Vyas portrays Ram Jethmalani in Hindi webseries The Verdict based on real life incident that is Nanavati case available on OTT platform Zee5 and in association with Ekta Kapoor's Alt Balaji. Actor Ram Kapoor portrays Jethmalani in the Bollywood film The Big Bull, starring Abhishek Bachchan, loosely based on the life and crimes of Harshad Mehta. Actor Sachin Khedekar portrays Jethmalani in the 2016 Bollywood film Rustom.