Maheswaran Thangawel, Sivaneswaran Balasubramaniam, Maheswaran Kandawanam, Krishnamurthi Kandasamy and Suresh Kumar Gnanasundaram are the five fasting Lankans.

Tambaram courts have acquitted them of charges of having attempted a revival of the LTTE, Thangawel has told radiogagana.com.

What they want is to return to their families, he said, adding that three of them were not well, with one of them paralysed below the waist.

From Jaffna and Kilinochchi, they had been arrested at Pallavaram in Chennai and detained for three years.