Ram Jethmalani breathed his last at 7.45 a.m. at his official residence in New Delhi, his son Mahesh Jethmalani told PTI .
Jethmalani’s son Mahesh and other close acquaintances said he was not keeping well for a few months. He passed away a few days before his 96th birthday on September 14.
Mahesh said his father’s last rites will be performed in the evening at the Lodhi road crematorium in New Delhi.
Besides Mahesh Jethmalani, the former Union Minister is survived by his daughter based in the U.S. His other daughter, Rani Jethmalani, died in 2011.
Jethmalani was the Union Law Minister and the Urban Development Minister during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government. He also served as the Supreme Court Bar Association president in 2010.
He was born in Shikarpur in Sindh province (now in Pakistan) on September 14, 1923 and obtained a law degree at the age of 17.
Noted jurist Ram Jethmalani passed away at 7.45 a.m. on September 8, 2019. He was 95 and he died days before his 96th birthday on September 14.
He was a Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), Senior Advocate (Supreme Court of India) and an eminent professor of law. He has served as India's Union Law Minister and as Chairman of Bar Council of India.
He obtained a law degree at the age of 17 and started practising law in Karachi until the partition of India, following which he moved to Bombay.
He married Durga at the age of eighteen. Later, in 1952, he married Ratna Shahani, who was herself a lawyer. He had two sons and two daughters- Janak, Shobha, Rani and Mahesh.
He was chosen to be a part of former President S.D. Sharma's cabinet in 1992 along with Jaswant Singh, Suraj Bhan, Sartaj Singh, Sikander Bakht, S.D. Sharma, Vajpayee, Murli Manohar Joshi, Dhananjaya Kumar, Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj and Suresh Prabhakar. He has served as a Union Minister for Law and Urban Development in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Cabinet.
A Rajya Sabha member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, he never shied away from criticising the party leadership. This led to him being expelled in 2013 from the primary membership of the party for six years for “breach of discipline.”
Mr. Jethmalani has fought several high-profile cases during his legal career. He has defended former deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani in the hawala scam case, stockbroker Harshad Mehta, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the assassins of former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, and former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.
He is survived by his son Mahesh Jethmalani, a well known lawyer, and daughter Shobha, who is based in the U.S.
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