Jagdish Tytler

Jagdish Tytler (born Jagdish Kapoor; 17 August 1944) is an Indian politician and former Member of Parliament.

He has held several government positions, the last being as Minister of State for Overseas Indian Affairs, a post from which he resigned after publication of a report by an official commission of inquiry, known as the Nanavati Commission.

Tytler was born on 17 August 1944 as Jagdish Kapoor to a Hindu father and a Sikh mother into a Punjabi Khatri family in Gujranwala, in the Punjab Province of British India (now in Punjab, Pakistan).

He was brought up by the educationist James Douglas Tytler, the founder of many public schools including the Delhi Public School and the Summer Fields School.

As a member of Congress' youth organization he was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980.

He served as a Union Minister first in the Civil Aviation department and then in the Labor department.

The commission had accused that he had a hand in organizing attacks on the Sikh community in Delhi after Sikh bodyguards assassinated the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

He has been charged with crimes related to those riots by CBI who filed a chargesheet against Jagdish Tytler on May 20, 2023.

Currently he is serving as permanent committee member of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee.

Tytler has been accused of involvement in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India, a charge that he denies.

The riots had occurred after Sikh bodyguards assassinated Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Tytler stated that he was present at Teen Murti Bhavan for the funeral ceremony with Gandhi's body and was in mourning at the time when these events occurred at Gurudwara Pulbangash, situated near Azad Market.

He has been charged with crimes related to the 1984 riots by CBI and a charge sheet was filed against Tytler on May 20, 2023.

India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) closed all cases against Tytler in November 2007 for his alleged criminal conspiracy to engineer riots against Sikhs in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's assassination on 31 October 1984.

The CBI submitted a report to the Delhi court which stated that no evidence or witness had been found to corroborate the allegations of instigating crowd during riot against Tytler.

He was re-elected in 1991 and served as the Union Minister of State for Surface Transport.

The report of Justice G.T. Nanavati, Commission constituted by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in May 2000, to investigate the "killing of innocent Sikhs" during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots said that Tytler "very probably" had a hand in organising the attacks.

The then Congress-led Government of India, however, decided not to prosecute him or anyone else named in the report due to lack of concrete evidence.

Tytler, who had been appointed minister of state with independent charge of non-resident affairs, claimed innocence, saying that it was a case of mistaken identity.

He said he had not been in the area at the time and that eight earlier commissions of inquiry had exonerated him.

In 2004, he was re-elected to the Lok Sabha.

In April 2004, the Indian National Congress announced Jagdish Tytler as its MP candidate for Delhi Sadar in the NCT of Delhi.

In 2004, lawyer H. S. Phoolka filed a case in the Ludhiana court against Tytler, accusing Tytler of defaming him during a television programme in the same year.

Tytler had claimed that Phoolka is making money by blackmailing people.

On 10 August 2005, he resigned from the Union Council of Ministers, stating that it was his "moral duty" to do so to prevent opposition parties making political capital out of the situation following release of the Nanavati report.

On 18 December 2007, the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of Delhi court, Sanjeev Jain, who had earlier dismissed the case after the CBI's report to his court, ordered the CBI to reopen cases against Tytler relating to the riots.

Due to the controversy concerning his involvement in the riots, the Congress party dropped his name as the candidate for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

In March 2009, the CBI filed its final report on investigation into the riots cases and cleared Jagdish Tytler.

The BJP which was then in opposition alleged that "such a clean chit ahead of the elections" implied that the CBI had been misused.

On 2 April, CBI claimed there was lack of sufficient evidence against Tytler and sought to close the riot case.

On 7 April 2009, the then Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, had a shoe thrown at him by Jarnail Singh, a Sikh journalist, during a press conference in Delhi.

Singh, who works at the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran, was dissatisfied with Chidambaram's answer to a question about the "clean chit" given to Tytler.

After the shoe throwing incident, the Congress party dropped both Tytler and Sajjan Kumar as Congress candidates for the Lok Sabha elections of 2009.

In 2010, CBI reiterated the clean chit to Tytler.

In 2011, his entry into the Jagannath Temple at Puri, which is reserved only for Hindus, caused questions about his religion, to be raised in the Odisha Legislative Assembly.

Tytler denied having converted to Christianity, and stated that he had changed his name to show his gratitude towards James Douglas Tytler, who had brought him up.

In 2014, Phoolka declined an "unconditional apology" from Tytler as a proposed settlement.

The court framed charges against Tytler in 2015.

As of July 2018, no verdict had been reached.

In 2019, Tytler said of the controversy surrounding the anti-Sikh riot accusations that"I do not understand why is this controversy. There were 5,000 people at the function, I was one of them. There is no FIR against me. CBI cleared me three times in its inquiry. You should ask the BJP if there is any FIR against me."