India, Sept. 18 -- For 47 years, Muppala Laxman Rao, popularly known as Ganpati, has been a fugitive.

The former school teacher (possibly in his late 70s), who built India's deadliest insurgency, spread it across states, trained villagers into guerrilla fighters, and taught generations of Maoist cadres how to disappear without a trace, has himself disappeared, even as the movement lies in ruins.

The men who once fought the war under Ganpati are surrendering, being arrested and facing justice.

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. Hours later, in West Bengal, Asim Mandal, a former Central Committee memb...