For 47 years, Muppala Laxman Rao, popularly known as Ganpati, has been a fugitive.
No Maoist attack has been reported since; for the first time in six decades, guns have fallen silent in India’s Naxal hotbeds. The men who once fought the war under Ganpati are surrendering, being arrested and facing justice. Hours later, in West Bengal, Asim Mandal, a former Central Committee member of the CPI (Maoist), surrendered after nearly three decades in hiding. In July, the last active Central Committee leader, Misir Besra, was caught while fleeing his hideout in Jharkhand. Ganpati shaped cadres like Besra and Mandal and ordered ambushes such as the Jhiram Valley massacre. Yet for intelligence agencies and security forces, one hunt remains unfinished: finding Ganpati, one of India’s longest-wanted fugitives. Police and intelligence agencies believe surrendered cadres could hold vital clues to Ganpati’s whereabouts. He still receives occasional visits from Intelligence Bureau and police officers. During these visits, the questions are often the same: Do you know where Ganpati is? Is he hiding in Nepal or elsewhere? Is he living under an assumed identity somewhere in Telangana or Bastar? Has he contacted anyone about surrendering? Ganpati’s only photograph, a grainy old image dating back to the 2000s, is uploaded on the wanted lists of different police forces and central agencies. “Be it the intelligence agencies or the security forces, there is a strong sentiment attached to finding Ganpati. He was responsible for many of the attacks and killings carried out by the Maoists, especially of security forces. He taught cadres how to build bombs and plant IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices]. He was arrested twice in the 1970s for his role in violent student protests and the radical student union. He has not been arrested since. Police believe he entered the Bastar jungles in the early 1980s, eventually rising through the Maoist ranks to lead what became India’s largest and longest insurgency. Back in Jagdalpur, Rupesh has watched from the sidelines as the organisation he once belonged to has collapsed—arrest after arrest, surrender after surrender, killing of his former comrades, and now a death sentence.
On Wednesday, a court in Raipur sentenced 10 Maoists to death for the 2013 Jhiram Valley massacre, in which 27 people—most of them senior Congress functionaries—were killed. On March 30, after India declared the end of the Naxal insurgency, what remained of the Maoist leadership was dismantled. Born in Telangana’s Karimnagar, he graduated with a BSc degree in 1970 and later worked as a high school teacher. After jumping bail in September 1979, he went underground.
Naxalism may be history, but Ganpati remains a prized target,” the official said.
