In the middle of a massive manhunt in the UK to nab him, 29-year-old Vijesh Kooriyil who was sentenced to 23 years in prison for child rape, was safely lodged in his home in Kerala’s Malappuram on an ostensible holiday.
On 2 June, Judge Peter Ross found the 29-year old business manager from India guilty on two counts of rape.
Vijesh Kooriyil, guilty of repeatedly raping a six-year-old child, fled the country on the night of 30 May, 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 1 June. During his stay there he behaved normally.
On 5 June 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
Though the judgement was delivered on 2 June, the first news reports were published only by 4 June. On the morning of 5 June, 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 or even three times a week and it 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 and called him innocent. Vijesh’s father, sister and wife also insisted on his innocence.
His friend, also 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.
The UK judge termed Vijesh as a ‘danger to the public.’
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.
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