Representative image.

Malappuram: An Oxford-educated Keralite, who fled London three days before a UK court convicted him for child rape, sought refuge at his family home in Parappanangadi here for a few days but has now gone missing.

On June 2, Oxford Crown Court found Vijesh Kooriyil, a 29-year-old business manager who studied computer science in Coimbatore and went to Oxford to pursue an MBA, guilty of rape and sentenced him to 23 years in prison.

It is learnt that Kooriyil, who left the UK on May 30, arrived here with his wife on June 1. He went into hiding last Sunday morning, after reports of the court verdict appeared in the media. A manhunt is on for Kooriyil.

“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,” Judge Peter Ross was quoted as saying in his sentence. “It was there, having secured the door with string and a nail, that the defendant began to rape a 6-year-old, then 7-year-old boy,” the judge added. Kooriyil’s family told TOI they were shocked to hear about the charges. They assumed that Kooriyil, who had married a Palakkad woman a year ago, had come home on leave.

