Indian police have broken up an alleged human trafficking ring which transported young boys to France on the pretext of sending them on rugby tours.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested three men after they allegedly tricked the families of 25 children into sending them to France for what they said was a rugby camp.

Once the boys arrived in France in early 2016 they were reportedly taken to a gurudwara, a Sikh temple, in Paris and stripped of their passports.

The case only came to light this year after two of the boys escaped and another was found by French police, who passed word of the trafficking ring to Interpol, the global policing body.

The fate of the other 22 boys remains unclear and it is feared they may have been shipped outside of France.