Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani has claimed that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal “used worse abuses than a mere crook” for Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
“When Arun Jaitley filed the first [defamation] suit and criminal case, you naturally sought my services,” the lawyer said in a letter he wrote to Kejriwal on July 20, a copy of which was uploaded on his blog on Friday. “Ask your conscience how many times you used worse abuses than a mere crook. You have hundred times asked me to teach this crook a lesson.”
On May 18, Jethmalani had called the finance minister a “crook” in court, after which Jaitley had filed a fresh Rs 10-crore suit against Kejriwal. The Aam Aadmi Party chief, however, told the Delhi High Court that he had not asked the counsel to use objectionable words against Jaitley.
“...No instructions to use objectionable words were ever given by him at any point of time to the learned senior counsel,” Kejriwal told the court in his reply to an application filed by Jaitley, according to The Indian Express.
On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court had fined Kejriwal Rs 10,000 in connection with cases filed against him by Jaitley. The court also warned him against asking any scandalous and offensive questions. Jethmalani quit as Kejriwal’s lawyer on Wednesday, and sought Rs 2 crore as his fee for representing him in court.
The 2015 case is related to Kejriwal’s claims that Jaitley had misused funds and his position while he was the president of the Delhi and District Cricket Association. Jaitley had filed a civil and criminal defamation case against Kejriwal and a few other AAP leaders in 2016. He has also sought Rs 10 crore in damages.
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