On a warm night last May, Nikhil Somwanshi sent his roommate a WhatsApp message asking him to tell his family that what was about to happen next was an accident. The message triggered a frantic search for the 24-year-old machine-learning engineer in southeast Bengaluru Somwanshi was a star student from a small village in the farm-dotted countryside. 9mths earlier he’d landed a coveted job at Ola Krutrim, an artificial intelligence startup worth $1 billion. Getting a job at Krutrim was a big deal for Somwanshi and his community. Banners went up in his village, congratulating him. He sent funds from...