A three-year-old girl at the centre of a violent custody battle was back with her French father last night after police arrested her Russian mother as she was trying to cross from Hungary into Ukraine.

Jean-Michel André, from the southern French town of Arles, flew to Hungary to collect his daughter Elise while police held Irina Belenkaya, her mother, on charges arising from her alleged abduction in Arles on March 20.

“I am extremely moved, extremely happy to find her again,” said Mr André as he was about to take Elise back to France from Nyiregyhaza, 155 miles east of Budapest. Ms Belenkaya was being held in custody in the same town after border police found her travelling in a car heading for Ukraine, accompanied by a Hungarian man.

The affair made news because of the violence allegedly used by the Russian mother to snatch the child. Two men, accompanied by a woman thought to be Ms Belenkaya, attacked Mr André as he was walking with his daughter, leaving him badly bruised. Proceedings were under way to extradite Ms Belenkaya to France to face charges over the abduction.

Mr André himself abducted the daughter from a street in Moscow last year after Belenkaya took her to Russia against his will and in defiance of a French court ruling, issued in divorce proceedings in 2007. A Russian court awarded custody to Ms Belenkaya.

The French media had earlier reported that mother and daughter had returned to Russia. Hungarian officials said that Mrs Belenkaya’s arrest showed the effectiveness of frontier controls on the edge of the European Union’s “Schengen” passport-free zone. “This is a success for the Hungarian police,” a spokesman said.

“The border guard checked the Schengen database and found that the woman was wanted for a criminal act while the small child, born in 2005, had been reported missing.” Fulop said.

Mr André wanted to “avoid causing further distress to the child,” his French lawyer said. “He wants his daughter to have a more or less normal life. He does not want another round of trench warfare against the mother.” The child was said by Hungarian officials to be in good spirits. “After getting over the first shock, Elise is feeling all right, she is out playing with the other kids,” the director of the local childcare centre said.

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