A serial attacker who raped four women and murdered his final victim, dumping her body in a children’s playground, has been jailed for life after an eight-year extradition battle.

Aman Vyas must serve 37 years minimum before being considered for parole after he turned a small patch of east London into what was described to a court as a “hunting ground” for a two-month spree of attacks in 2009.

Vyas, 36, fled to India and an international manhunt tracked him down. He fought extradition for close to a decade and the sister of the woman he stalked and murdered said she had feared he would evade justice.

He carried out attacks across Walthamstow between 24 March 2009 and 30 May 2009. His final victim was Michelle Samaraweera, 35. She was attacked after visiting a supermarket at about 1am on 30 May 2009. Her body was discovered by a dog walker in a children’s playground four hours later. Vyas lied and claimed she died accidentally after consensual sex.

Vyas was convicted of murdering and raping Samaraweera and the rape of three other women aged between 35 and 59.

Sentencing Vyas at Croydon crown court, Justice Bryan told him: “In the spring of 2009, there was a stranger rapist prowling the streets of Walthamstow looking for his prey. You were that rapist.”

The judge said Vyas stalked Samaraweera before killing her by asphyxiation: “You were willing to kill in pursuit of your sexual perversions and in Michelle you found a victim who fought back … She had to be silenced and silenced she was.”

DNA police recovered from the attack scenes proved a dead end as Vyas, then aged 24, was not on the DNA database. Police asked for local men to take tests and 1,100 DNA swabs were taken as part of the investigation, allowing men to be ruled out.

Police issued images of a man they wanted to talk to and Vyas left the UK. Shortly after that, a chance breakthrough led to him.

Vyas’s former boss at a dry cleaners where he had worked recognised him as the person police wanted to speak to. He gave detectives a water bottle that Vyas’s brother, who still worked for him, had drunk from.

It was enough via DNA testing to establish a familial link and that Vyas was the probable suspect.

DS Shaleena Sheikh said: “We knew from the description from the victims he was of Asian origin, so there was a huge DNA trawl from within that area and we still had no matches.

“Then the CCTV from the store that Michelle bought some groceries from captured Vyas … That was put on an appeal poster that was sent to around 60,000 addresses. We then received a call from a gentleman who said: ‘I know that person, he used to work for me. He’s now gone back to India, but his brother still works here. He’s drank from a bottle of water, I’ve kept that bottle’, is effectively what happened.

“DNA was taken from that water bottle and it was shown that the person who committed the offences was a male sibling of the person who drank from that bottle, which then led to Aman Vyas being identified.”

Finally detectives had a name and a solid suspect. On 2 July 2009, a month after Samaraweera’s murder and just a few days after a Crimewatch appeal about the case, they established Vyas had bought a one-way ticket to India and left the UK.

By 2011, inquiries revealed Vyas had been in New Zealand, then Singapore, and then the trail went cold. In July 2011, more than two years after the attacks, Indian officials told Scotland Yard they had arrested Vyas at New Delhi airport in India as he tried to fly out.

Extradition proceedings began and he was not returned to the UK until 4 October 2019, when full DNA tests established him as the suspect.

Michelle’s sister, Ann, said: “Aman Vyas has had over 11 years to come clean and admit to raping and murdering my sister, and even longer to admit to all the other heinous crimes committed against all the other innocent victims. He has also had all this time to reflect on his own life and address the issues that have turned him into the monster.

“Instead he has lied and fabricated stories for his own benefit. He will never understand what he put my mother, sisters, children, loved ones, friends and myself through.

“Vyas potentially spending the rest of his life in prison is not a punishment but a privilege, it will never be enough.”