Manhunt to catch 'dangerous' child rapist who fled UK night before trial after being allowed to keep passport – Mirror UK
Hunt for paedophile who fled the UK to India on eve of his trial – Telegraph UK
Even as newspapers in the United Kingdom reported about a manhunt that had been launched to trace 29-year-old Vijesh Kooriyil sentenced to 23 years in prison for child rape, he was at his home in Kerala’s Malappuram on an ostensible holiday.
On June 2, Judge Peter Ross of the Oxford Crown Court found the 29-year old business manager from India guilty on two counts of rape and sentenced him to 23 years in prison.
Vijesh Kooriyil, the man found guilty of repeatedly raping a six-year-old child, had fled the country on the night of May 30, a day before he was supposed to appear for the trial.
Vijesh’s family and friends have confirmed that he along with his wife had reached his parents’ house in Puthanpeedika in Malappuram on June 1. During his stay there he behaved normally and even went out with friends.
“On June 5th morning, we had decided to go to a temple and he said he would join us there. All of us went to the temple, but he never came. We have not seen him after that,” Vijesh’s father said.
Though the judgement was delivered on June 2, news reports were first published only by June 4. On June 5th morning, as more news outlets started picking up the story, Vijesh fled again.
Vijesh landed in the United Kingdom on a student visa a few years ago and committed the crime while he was in Oxford. His victim, a six-year-old boy was raped twice a week, or even three times a week at the peak of the offence and that went on until December 2011, according to the judge.
“The complaint against him was filed in 2014 and he was arrested from Scotland in 2014. He married in 2015 at Palakkad,” Vijesh’s friend said.
His wife, who had been living with him in UK claimed that she had not been aware of the case. “I did not know there was a case against him. He is innocent,” she said.
Vijesh’s father, sister and wife insisted he was innocent and the media was haunting him. “It must have been a misunderstanding,” said Vijesh’s dad.
His friend settled in the United Kingdom claimed that the case was a fake one and that he was a victim of ‘stringent’ laws that treated any kind of affection harshly.
Though Vijesh’s family claims he was innocent, the UK judge had termed him as a ‘danger to the public’.
During the sentencing, the judge said:
"Vijesh Kooriyil deployed the all too familiar ways of gaining a child's trust. He would often call the boy to come and play with him. Some of those games were innocent enough, but others took place in the defendant's bedroom. It was there, having secured the door with string and a nail, that the defendant began to rape a six-year-old, then-seven-year-old boy."