New Delhi: Veteran Indian lawyer and former Union Law Minister Ram Jethmalani passed away early morning on Sunday at the age of 95. He breathed his last at his New Delhi residence. Jethmalani was keeping ill since long and in the last two weeks he had been on constant medical assistance, reports said. His last rites will be performed at 4pm at Lodhi crematorium.


Jethmalani was a sitting member of the Rajya Sabha from the Rashtriya Janata Dal since the year 2016.

Once the highest paid lawyer in the Supreme Court, Jethmalani has served as India's Union Law Minister and as chairman of the Bar Council of India.

On the political front, he has served as Law Minister of India and also as Minister of Urban Development when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. Later he contested election in the general elections of 2004 from Lucknow constituency against Vajpayee. However, in 2010 he came back to BJP and was elected to Rajya Sabha on its ticket from Rajasthan.

Jethmalani has represented a number of cases in his career spanning 78 years, from high profile ones to controversial ones, for which he had to often face criticism as well.

Among his high-profile cases were the defence of Rajiv Gandhi's killers in Madras High Court in 2011 and the defence of Indira Gandhi's killer. He challenged the medical evidence (PMR) given by T D Dogra on Indira Gandhi.

The  eminent lawyer appeared in the famous K.M. Nanavati versus State of Maharashtra case in 1959. He also fought the multi-crore 2G scam in 2011. He was L.K. Advani's defence in the Hawala scam. He also fought for Arvind Kejriwal in a defamation case filed by Arun Jaitley.