Renowned lawyer Ram Jethmalani fired a fresh letter at his erstwhile client Arvind Kejriwal in continuation on his 20 July letter conveying his decision to quit as the CM’s counsel.
Jaitley is upset with the Delhi chief minister, Kejriwal for telling the court that the lawyer acted on his own in using a demeaning expression against Jaitley. In his 20 July letter to Kejriwal, Jethmalani said, “When Arun Jaitley filed the first suit and the criminal case, you naturally sought my services. Ask your conscience how many times you used worse abuses than a mere ‘…….’ (the derogatory word Jethmalani had used, triggering the second Rs 10-crore defamation case against Kejriwal).
Kejriwal had accused Jaitley of complicity in the “DDCA scam”, leading the latter to file a defamation suit seeking Rs 10 crore.
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In his July 20 letter to Kejriwal, Jethmalani said: “You have hundred times asked me to teach this (derogatory word) a lesson. Incidentally, for the last couple of weeks, you only met me briefly. However, your assistant Raghav Chadha and advocate Anupam Srivastava have been briefing me in the matter. Of course, the law is settled that no suit for damages lies against parties and lawyers even if the suggestion made only in court judicial proceedings proves to be false or malicious.”
Kejriwal enaged Jethamalani, a known detractor of finance minister to defend himself. But the two fell out over the use of an unsavory term by the lawyer for the finance minister during the proceedings on May 17.
Now Jethmalani in his fresh letter to Kejriwal said, “But please do not misunderstand, I am not advising you to continue the fight. If you think Jaitley will withdraw the suit on seeing this letter to me (sic), do by any means settle with him. I will take the consequences. One thing is certain, I will not now appear in any matter for your defense; only pay the settled fees for first matter and nothing for the second.”
