Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by choosing the correct/most appropriate options: 

On Sunday, 13 April 1919, Dyer, convinced a major insurrection could take place, banned all meetings. This notice was not widely disseminated, and many villagers gathered in the Bagh to celebrate the important Sikh and Hindu festival of Baisakhi, and peacefully protest the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. At 9:00 on the morning of 13 April 1919, the traditional festival of Baisakhi, Reginald Dyer, the acting military commander for Amritsar and its environs, proceeded through the city with several city officials, announcing the implementation of a pass system to enter or leave Amritsar, a curfew beginning at 20:00 that night and a ban on all processions and public meetings of four or more persons. The proclamation was read and explained in English, Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi, but few paid it any heed or appear to have learned of it later. Meanwhile, local police had received intelligence of the planned meeting in the Jallianwala Bagh through word of mouth and plainclothes detectives in the crowds. At 12:40, Dyer was informed of the meeting and returned to his base at around 13:30 to decide how to handle it.

By mid-afternoon, thousands of Indians had gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (garden) near the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar. Many who were present had earlier worshipped at the Golden Temple and were passing through the Bagh on their way home. The Bagh was (and remains today) an open area of six to seven acres, roughly 200 yards by 200 yards in size, and surrounded on all sides by walls roughly 10 feet in height. Balconies of houses three to four stories tall overlooked the Bagh, and five narrow entrances opened onto it, several with lockable gates. During the rainy season, it was planted with crops but served as a local meeting and recreation area for much of the year. In the center of the Bagh were a samadhi (cremation site) and a large well partly filled with water which measured about 20 feet in diameter.

Apart from pilgrims, Amritsar had filled up over the preceding days with farmers, traders, and merchants attending the annual Baisakhi horse and cattle fair. The city police closed the fair at 14:00 that afternoon, resulting in an even larger number of people drifting into the Jallianwala Bagh. Dyer arranged for an airplane to overfly the Bagh and estimate the size of the crowd, which he reported was about 6,000, while the Hunter Commission estimates a crowd of 10,000 to 20,000 had assembled by the time of Dyer's arrival. Colonel Dyer and Deputy Commissioner Irving, the senior civil authority for Amritsar, took no actions to _______ the crowd from assembling or to peacefully disperse the crowds. This would later be a serious criticism leveled at both Dyer and Irving.

An hour after the meeting began as scheduled at 17:30, Colonel Dyer arrived at the Bagh with a group of 50 troops, including 25 Gurkhas of 1/9 Gurkha Rifles (1st battalion, 9th Gurkha Rifles), 25 Sikhs, Pathans and Baluch, and 59th Sindh Rifles and 54th Sikhs Rifles. Fifty of them were armed with .303 Lee–Enfield bolt-action rifles. Dyer may have specifically chosen troops from those ethnic groups due to their proven loyalty to the British. He had also brought two armored cars armed with machine guns; however, the vehicles could not enter the compound through the narrow entrances. The Jallianwala Bagh was surrounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had only five narrow entrances, most kept permanently locked. The main entrance was relatively wide but was guarded heavily by the troops backed by the armored vehicles so as to prevent anyone from getting out.

Dyer, without warning the crowd to disperse, blocked the main exits. Dyer ordered his troops to begin shooting toward the densest sections of the crowd in front of the available narrow exits, where panicked crowds were trying to leave the Bagh. The firing continued for approximately ten minutes. Unarmed civilians including men, women, elderly people, and children were killed. This incident came to be known as the Amritsar massacre. Cease-fire were ordered only when ammunition supplies were almost exhausted. He stated later that this act "was not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience." The following day Dyer stated in a report that "I have heard that between 200 and 300 of the crowd were killed. My party fired 1,650 rounds". Apart from the many deaths directly from the shooting, a number of people died of crushing in the stampedes at the narrow gates or by jumping into the solitary well on the compound to escape the shooting. A plaque, placed at the site after independence, states that 120 bodies were removed from the well. Dyer pushed the curfew time earlier than the usual time; therefore, the wounded could not be moved from where they had fallen and more who had been injured then died during the night.