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

Rajiv Gandhi was busy election campaigning with G.K. Moopanar in southern states of India. On 21 May, after campaigning in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, his next stop was Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. About two hours after arriving in Madras (now Chennai), Gandhi was driven by motorcade in a white Ambassador car to Sriperumbudur, stopping along the way at a few other election campaigning venues. When Rajiv reached a campaign rally in Sriperumbudur, he left his car and began walking towards the dais where he was to deliver a speech. Along the way, he was garlanded by many well-wishers, Indian National Congress workers, and school children. The assassin, Dhanu (Thenmozhi Rajaratnam), approached and greeted him. She then bent down to touch his feet and detonated an RDX explosive-laden belt tucked below her dress at exactly 10:10 PM. Gandhi, his assassin, and 14 others were killed in the explosion that followed, along with 43 others who were grievously injured. The assassination was caught on film by a local photographer, Haribabu, whose camera and film was found intact at the site despite him also dying in the blast.

Immediately after the assassination, the Chandrasekhar government handed the investigation _______ to the CBI on 22 May 1991. The agency created a special investigation team under D. R. Karthikeyan to determine who was responsible for the assassination. The SIT probe confirmed the role of the LTTE in the assassination, which was upheld by the Supreme Court of India. The interim report of Justice Milap Chand Jain, looking into the conspiracy angle to the assassination, indicted the DMK for colluding with the LTTE. The report concluded that the DMK had provided sanctuary to the LTTE, which made it easier for the rebels to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. The Commission report stated that the year 1989 signified "the perpetuation of the general political trend of indulging the Tamil militants on Indian soil and tolerance of their wide-ranging criminal and anti-national activities". The report also alleged that LTTE leaders in Jaffna were in possession of sensitive coded messages exchanged between the Union government and the state government of DMK. "There is evidence to show that, during this period, some of the most vital wireless messages were passed between the LTTE operatives based in Tamil Nadu and Jaffna. These messages, which were decoded later, are directly related to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi", the report stated. Congress subsequently brought down the United Front (UF) government of I K Gujral after the report was leaked in November 1998. The party also demanded the removal of DMK from the UF government, arguing that it had played a key role in the death of Rajiv Gandhi.

The assassination was carried out by Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, also known as Kalaivani Rajaratnam, Dhanu, or Gayatri. Born on 1 January 1974 in Sri Lanka, she was from Kupukullai in Jaffna and studied until middle school in Batticaloa. She was inspired by the Tamil militant group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers) at a young age and joined the Black Tigers (suicide bombers). The main reason why Dhanu became a Tiger is that her brother was a well-known cadre who had died and she was carrying on the family tradition. Thenmozhi was the daughter of a Sri Lankan Tamil man named A. Rajaratnam and his second wife. He allegedly was described as Velupillai Prabhakaran's mentor, and he played a vital role in molding the LTTE chief's thinking during the movement's formative years between 1972 and 1975. The marital status of Thenmozhi at the time of her death is not known to the general public. Thenmozhi was survived by her mother, brother Sivavarman and two sisters, one of whom moved to France. The court convicted and sentenced the seven persons who facilitated the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi to life imprisonment. They are currently undergoing life imprisonment in prisons in India.