Alex Baty, the British teenager who was found this week in southern France after disappearing six years ago, returned to Britain on Saturday, British police said, as they now want to clarify the circumstances of his disappearance and work on his “reintegration into society”.

The boy, who left a spiritual community in the Pyrenees, had disappeared in 2017 at the age of 11 while on holiday with his mother and grandfather in Malaga, Spain.

Manchester Police announced that the teenager met with a relative along with the police officers who accompanied him on his return journey to Britain.

“I am delighted to announce that Alex has returned safely to Britain after six years,” Matt Boyle, deputy chief constable of Manchester police in northern England, told reporters.

“It’s a very important moment for him and his family and we’re happy that they were able to fight back after so long,” he noted.

Police need to speak with the teenager to find out what happened to him “at his own pace” and determine whether there will be a criminal investigation, Boyle added.

Priority will be given to ensuring the welfare of Alex and his family “and his reintegration into society as quickly as possible”, Boyle noted.

The teenager had spent the previous two years in various regions of southern France, living in “spiritual communities” with his mother, but not in a sect, the deputy prosecutor of Toulouse, in southern France, Antoine Leroy, had said on Friday.

His grandfather died about six months ago, according to Leroy, who clarified that the boy’s mother may currently be in Finland.

Alex Baty, who lived a “nomadic” life in a “spiritual” community for six yearswas found by chance on Thursday night by a delivery driver as he walked along a road in a mountainous area near Toulouse, Leroy had noted, adding that the teenager was “in good health, ‘very calm’ and looking” intelligent,” according to the doctor who examined him. He also did not appear to have been ill-treated in the six years he was missing, according to the French prosecutor.

French television network BFM TV reported that a search operation is underway to find his mother, Melanie Baty.

She had been deprived of custody of her son, which had been given by British justice to his maternal grandmother, Susan Caruana, because she herself had been deemed “unstable”, and in the summer of 2017 she had obtained permission to take him with her of holidays in Spain for 15 days.

But when that period passed, Alex Baty did not return to his grandmother, who lives near Manchester.

A search warrant was then issued on August 10, 2017, to find the child, his mother and his grandfather David Batty, who was divorced from his grandmother.

For six years Bati with his mother and grandfather lived a nomadic life and never stayed more than a few months in the same place, first in Morocco and then in the French Pyrenees.

But when his mother announced to him that she wanted them to continue their “journey” and go to Finland, the teenager decided to leave and followed the road towards Toulouse, where he walked for four nights and slept the day before he was found by the driver – distributor.