Ram Jethmalani, twice Indian Law Minister, criminal lawyer, jurist, teacher, litigant and parliamentarian who relished the epithet 'unchanged and unrepentant maverick', passed away at 95 on Sunday. Jethmalani remains an enigma in modern times as he was a man who spoke and acted out of personal conviction. "I do not claim to be infallible but even my most trenchant critics would not deny that I speak and act out of personal conviction. I write also to stir debate and have the humility to retract my views when bested in such debates," he wrote in Maverick Unchanged and Unrepentant.
He argued his first brief in the court of Sindh at the age of 17. A refugee himself, he had moved the Bombay High Court for the humane treatment of refugees in India. He recounted that his days in an Indian refugee camp made him believe that "India and Pakistan must forget the tribulations of the tragic Partition and develop a relationship of trust and cooperation. I have ceaselessly striven to achieve this throughout my political career".
He took every opportunity to chastise judges and bring them down to the earth. An onlooker often felt he relished the moment when he would drive in the fact that they had not even started their legal careers when he was already a senior lawyer. He defended the likes of Harshad Mehta, Ketan Parekh, underworld don Haji Mastan, the killers of former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, BJP veteran L.K. Advani in the hawala scandal and headed Manu Sharma's defence in the Jessica Lal murder case. In his speeches, he was an advocate against death penalty. "A man should not pass irrevocable sentences," he reasoned.