An 80-year-old Frenchman has been being freed from a laundry room, where he had been held prisoner by a wife half his age and her alleged lover.

French police rescued the unnamed man from his home prison in the village of Arrou, southwest of Paris.

After being taken to hospital, the man was able to tell how he had been starved and physically abused at the hands of his own family.

Gendarmes later said the man had been shockingly treated, to the point where he was beaten often and barely fed.

His wife, 45, has been jailed pending trial on offences including taking advantage of a vulnerable person.

Her alleged lover and her son are now on bail after being charged with complicity with kidnapping and failing to report the abuse.

Police were alerted to the old man's plight by one of the woman's children.

Investigators said the man's family may have had a motive to keep him out of the public eye as around 500,000 euros had been stolen from the man's bank accounts in recent months.