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.

[1] Tytler was born on 17 August 1944 as Jagdish Kapoor to a Hindu father and Sikh mother in the Punjabi family of Gujranwala in British India.

[3] 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 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.

[11] 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.

[12] 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.

[17] 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.

[23] 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.

CBI had produced a CD before the court to prove that Tytler was not at the location of riot but was present at the residence of Indira Gandhi.

"[33] In November 2021, the Shirimani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh that his party will move a resolution in the upcoming Punjab Assembly session seeking Tytler's arrest.

[35] He is married to Jennifer, daughter of a Scottish mother and an Irish father, born in Delhi, who is the principal of the J D Tytler School.