Former Union Minister and veteran lawyer Ram Jethmalani’s reputation for taking up high-profile criminal cases is quite well known, so much so that some of the accused in the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case made an unusual plea in the 1990s that the State Legal Services Authority should engage Jethmalani as their defence counsel. They were hoping that the man who defended the conspirators in the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi assassination case would take up their cases too.
The eminent lawyer did not agree, and the State government was relieved that it need not have to foot the bill. However, more than 20 years later, he was to be felicitated in a function in Chennai for saving the three death row convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case from the gallows. He successfully argued the case in the Supreme Court in 2014 for the reduction of their death sentence to one of life, citing the extraordinary delay in the disposal of their mercy petitions.
Earlier, in 2011, Jethmalani obtained a stay on their execution from the Madras High Court, arguing that the decision to hang them after keeping their mercy petitions in limbo for 11 years was immoral and illegal.
Lawyers used to throng the courts in which Jethmalani appeared. And it was not confined to the Madras High Court. One of his famous lost causes was his appearance in defence of Premananda, a self-styled godman who ran an ashram near Tiruchi and was sentenced to a double life imprisonment for the rape of minor girls in his precincts and the murder of an inmate. He couldn’t make a dent on the prosecution case at any level, from the trial court in Pudukottai to the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court.
In 1995, Jethmalani appeared before the High Court to seek a stay on a city magistrate’s summons to then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in the TANSI land deal case on a private complaint. He surprised the courtroom by running down the very precedent that he was relying on. He said the magistrate had ignored a Madras High Court judgment laying down that no court should take cognisance of any case involving a public servant without prior sanction for prosecution. “If I were teaching in a classroom, I would say the High Court is wrong, and the magistrate is right,” he said, and went on to explain that the requirement of prior sanction was limited to offences committed by public servants in the discharge of their duties. He knew all too well that the act for which Jayalalithaa was sought to be prosecuted under Section 169 of the Indian Penal Code (government servant buying or bidding for property he is legally prohibited from buying), for purchasing TANSI land through a partnership firm, was not related to her official duties. “Nevertheless, the magistrate is bound by the High Court’s judgment,” he said. The court stayed the summons.
On another occasion, the Economic Offences court in Egmore was brimming with lawyers the day he pressed for bail for V. Bhaskaran, a nephew of V.K. Sasikala, then an influential aide to the CM. Bhaskaran was charged with violating the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. The noted lawyer was trying to convince the court that it was not as serious an offence as it was made out to be, and that it was not long before the outdated foreign exchange laws were replaced by liberal provisions. The Enforcement Directorate prosecutor managed to get the bail petition dismissed that day.