Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai ordered continuous monitoring as foreign nationals Priyanka Chaudhary and Dr Meena Gupta remain missing along flood-ravaged Himalayan routes.

RAIPUR, Aug 28 — Two foreign nationals linked to Chhattisgarh have vanished in Nepal after catastrophic floods and landslides tore through the Himalayan country, prompting the state administration to mount an urgent cross-border tracing operation. The Chhattisgarh Government has successfully accounted for nine people tied to the state, but search teams haven’t established contact with 39-year-old Finnish citizen Priyanka Chaudhary of Bilaspur or British citizen Dr Meena Gupta from Surguja. Gupta’s last known signal placed her at the Rasuwagadhi Immigration Office on the rugged Nepal-China border before communication collapsed entirely. Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai isn’t taking any chances with the crisis, as he’s instructed state district collectors and central agencies to coordinate directly with authorities in Kathmandu to locate the missing women.

And the search teams are racing against severe infrastructure breakdowns across the flood zone.

The administration has made significant breakthroughs in locating other stranded travellers who went silent when the weather worsened. Officials established direct communication with the family of Monika Yadav from Mahadev Ghat, Raipur, who travelled into Nepal on August 22 and lost cell connectivity when the rivers overflowed. They’ve also tracked down the family of 65-year-old Bilaspur resident Manju Rai Chaudhary, who was travelling through the region for the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra. But how can relief operations maintain reliable contact when landslides have obliterated critical mountain transport corridors?

Five pilgrims managed to beat the odds and make it out safely.

Dinesh Ojha, Prem Singh Jagat, Narayan Sen, Yatendra Prakashi, and Dinesh Singh Thakur — all residents of Raipur’s Mana locality — survived the initial deluges after arriving in Nepal on August 21. State officials confirmed on Friday that all five men are completely unharmed and have started their long journey back to Chhattisgarh. To manage the ongoing distress calls, the state opened dedicated emergency channels, setting up toll-free line 1070 and local control room 0771-2223471. Sai’s office won’t close the monitoring cell until every resident stranded in the disaster zone makes it across the border.