Jaitley, Jethmalani lock horns in high court

Union Minister Arun Jaitley and senior advocate Ram Jethmalani had a heated exchange of words in Delhi high court on Wednesday when the minister was being cross-examined in a defamation case against chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. The recording of Jaitley’s statement in a civil defamation suit of ₹10 crore filed by him against Kejriwal and other AAP functionaries could not continue as the minister objected to the use of a word against him by the veteran lawyer representing the chief minister.

NEW DELHI: Union minister Arun Jaitley and senior advocate Ram Jethmalani had a heated exchange of words in Delhi high court on Wednesday when the minister was being crossexamined in a defamation case against Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

The recording of Jaitley’s statement in a civil defamation suit of ₹10 crore filed by him against Kejriwal and other AAP functionaries could not continue as the minister objected to the use of a word against him by the veteran lawyer representing the chief minister.

During cross-examination, Jethmalani alleged that Jaitley was “deceiving the people by concealing his guilt of crime.”

The counsel representing the finance minister vehemently opposed the choice of words by Jethmalani saying he must stop insulting the minister.

The finance minister, who appeared before joint registrar Deepali Sharma, lost his cool and asked Jethmalani whether the word was used as per instructions from Kejriwal.

“If this is so, I would aggravate the charges against the defendant (Kejriwal),” Jaitley said, adding that there was a limit to personal malice.

Senior advocates Rajiv Nayar and Sandeep Sethi, who were rep- resenting Jaitley, also said that Jethmalani was putting scandalous questions and should restrain himself from asking irrelevant ones “as this matter is Arun Jaitley versus Arvind Kejriwal and not Ram Jethmalani versus Arun Jaitley”. To this, Jethmalani said he used the word on the instruction of Kejriwal.

However, Anupam Srivastav, advocate on record for Kejriwal since the beginning of the suit, said he had no instruction on the use of the word.

Jaitley has filed the civil defamation suit seeking ₹10 crore damages from Kejriwal and five other AAP leaders — Raghav Chadha, Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai — for accusing him of financial irregularities in the DDCA of which he was the president from 2000 to 2013.

The verbal exchange between Jethmalani and Jaitley started when the former asked a question alleging that his article on irregularities in DDCA could not get published in a weekly magazine at Jaitley’s instance.

JAITLEY’S LAWYERS SAID SENIOR ADVOCATE JETHMALANI WAS ASKING SCANDALOUS QUESTIONS WHILE CROSSEXAMINING THE FINANCE MINSITER