Infosys says Public Services chief Lax Gopisetty is unreachable after the Nepal floods

Infosys said on Friday that Lax Gopisetty, president and chief executive of its U.S. and Canada public-sector subsidiary, is not reachable after the flash floods that tore through the Nepal-Tibet border. The company said he was in the region in a personal capacity.

"We can confirm that our colleague Lax Gopisetty, who was visiting the region in a personal capacity, is currently not reachable," the Bengaluru firm said in a statement carried by PTI. It said it was working with agencies to gather information and stay in contact with his family.

Infosys Public Services sells technology work to governments in North America. Gopisetty has run the unit as president and CEO. Company biographies list earlier posts at BearingPoint, IBM, PwC and HCL.

The Karnataka list

Gopisetty is one name on a longer state roster. Karnataka's State Emergency Operations Centre said on Friday that it had details of 24 residents missing or stranded in Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Twenty were from Bengaluru Urban, two from Mysuru, and one each from Dharwad and Udupi. Most were last placed in Timure in Rasuwa district. A few were listed in Darchen in Tibet. Four of the 24 were later confirmed safe, leaving 20 still to be traced at that count.

Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar said on Saturday that 17 people from the state remained untraced and that the government was working around the clock. He told families that officials would arrange lodging in Delhi for those who reach India and then move them on to Bengaluru. Deputy Chief Minister G. Parameshwara had said on Friday that 12 people from Karnataka were known to be affected, with more possibly stranded.

Bengaluru food vlogger Kripal Amanna asked the public for word of his brother-in-law, V.S. Balasubramanyam, a U.S. citizen travelling with an Isha Foundation group toward Kailash Mansarovar when the flood hit.

What the flood did to the route

The surge began on 26 August after ice and rock collapsed near the Nepal-China border and sent a wall of water and debris down the Bhote Koshi-Trishuli system. Nepal's disaster authority put the national death toll at 626 in its 10 a.m. bulletin on 29 August, with 2,426 people missing. Nepal Police had recovered 616 bodies by 6 a.m. Chitwan and Nawalparasi East, far downstream, account for most of the recovered dead. Rasuwa, where the flood started, has reported far fewer bodies because entire stretches of road and settlement were carried away.

India's Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday that 320 Indian citizens were still out of contact and about 400 were safe but stranded on the Chinese side. It said 84 Indians had been rescued and 149 had crossed from China into Nepal. Three Indian Air Force flights have carried relief cargo. An 11-member Indian tunnel-rescue team is on the ground after Kathmandu reversed an earlier refusal of foreign specialists.

Why a company statement matters here

Most of the missing are pilgrims, drivers and local residents, not listed officers of listed companies. A named executive forces a public company to speak, and that statement is now part of the record families and reporters can check against the MEA and Karnataka lists. Infosys did not say which village or road Gopisetty was on. The company did say the trip was personal, which keeps the search in the consular and disaster channel rather than a corporate evacuation plan.

Phone networks in Rasuwa and adjoining valleys are still down in patches. That is why "not reachable" is not the same as a confirmed death or a confirmed rescue. It is a status that can change when a helicopter lands or a satellite phone is handed to a survivor.

Shivakumar's Saturday instruction to house returnees in Delhi is a practical admission that the bottleneck is no longer only the mud. It is the journey from Kathmandu to an Indian airport and then home, for people who may have lost documents, cash and phones in the same hour the river rose.