An eight-year-old Burbage boy was at the centre of an abduction scare on Sunday evening resulting in a major police search in the Marlborough area involving the force helicopter.

Police have not named the school boy who went home and told his mother than three Asian men had asked him to get in their car after asking him for directions to Savernake Forest.

As a result police launched a huge search for the car with officers on the ground including dog handlers and the aerial support unit monitoring the operation from the sky.

However, said Sgt Andy Peach, the initial scare petered out when it appeared that the three men may innocently have asked the boy for directions to the forest and he misinterpreted it as an attempt to get him into their car.

In the meantime officers had launched an air and ground search for the dark coloured car with three men in it and switched their hunt to the Marlborough area when a car answering that description was spotted leaving the Postern Hill picnic and camp site at Savernake Forest.

In that car, said Sgt Peach, were three young local men who did not want to get stopped by police because they had been in the forest smoking cannabis.

The car led the police on a pursuit that took them through Marlborough and along country lanes in the Mildenhall direction with the helicopter tracking its progress from above.

Eventually when traffic officers stopped the suspect car they found it was three men from the Marlborough area who did not fit the description of the three men who had spoken to the boy at Burbage.

“It turned out the three men in the black car spotted coming out of Savernake Forest had been in there while the occupants smoked cannabis they told officers,” said Sgt Peach.

Officers were unable to locate the dark coloured car that sparked off the hunt in Burbage in the first place but Sgt Peach said after they had been able to question the eight year old more closely it was believed there was no abduction attempt.

He said: “There was no grabbing or any real attempt to get him in the car.

“It is possible that they stopped to ask the boy for directions and when he was unable to help them he thought they were asking him to get into their car to show them.”

Sgt Peach said the boy and his family had acted properly in alerting the police.