A British student was recovering at home yesterday after being kidnapped at gunpoint and held captive for three days while backpacking in India.

Clyde MacFarlane, 20, was seized in an alleyway, detained in a derelict house without food and forced to telephone his father in England to ask for the ransom.

Police in Britain and India launched a joint operation when Mr MacFarlane’s father received the call and alerted the authorities.

Officers swooped as the kidnappers took the university student to Jaipur to collect a £2,000 ransom which his family said had been sent to a bank in India. The gang’s car broke down during the journey to the bank and police grabbed them at a checkpoint as they attempted to complete their journey by bus.

Safely back at his home in Chichester, West Sussex, Mr MacFarlane spoke about his ordeal as he began the second year of a degree at the University of Manchester.

“The fact that the car was rickety and broke down probably saved my life,” he said. “The fact we were on a bus meant there was no getaway for the kidnappers.”

The kidnap occurred as he was walking down an alley to visit a market in the tiny village of Ranthampur in Rajasthan. Two men pressed him against a wall, held a gun to his head and demanded that he hand over his cash.

Mr MacFarlane was bundled into his captors’ car and taken to an abandoned house. “I remember sitting in the house feeling terrified as I listened to the kidnappers arguing about what they should do with me.

“The fact is I feared the worst. Anything could have happened to me. For all I know they could have been planning to kill me. They got me to phone home on my mobile and come up with a ruse that I ask for £2,000 to pay for a new plane ticket home.

“I managed to call my dad on the phone but I said I had been kidnapped – the captors didn’t understand what I was saying.”

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