The families of six former British soldiers lodged in a Tamil Nadu jail expressed “sheer relief” after an Indian court acquitted them over an illegal weapons charge on Monday.

The so-called “Chennai Six” had been arrested in October 2013 and sentenced for carrying arms on a commercial US ship.

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They were held while working for an anti-piracy security company protecting commercial ships off the coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean and have pleaded their innocence ever since.

“I just feel sheer relief finally we are getting our family back together,” said Yvonne MacHugh, the fianc of Billy Irving, one of the six men.

“Finally all the men are going to be home with their families. They have been acquitted of all charges, so they have done no wrongdoing and finally we have proven that,” she said.

The Madras High Court on Monday ruled that all charges against the six men and 29 others arrested with them be dropped with immediate effect, and the fines they were ordered to pay be refunded.

The Madurai bench directed that all crew members of MV Seaman Guard Ohio can apply to the Indian authorities to get back their passports after which they will be able to travel home to the UK.

“They still need to get police clearance before they can come home, so there are steps being taken to try to ensure that everything’s in place,” said Joanne Tomlinson, the sister of another British ex-soldier John Armstrong.

She was among the friends and family members who had been leading a campaign in the UK, including lobbying ministers and Downing Street, to secure the release of the men.

Besides Armstrong and Irving, the other British former soldiers who have been in a Chennai jail for four years include Nick Dunn, Ray Tindall, Paul Towers, and Nicholas Simpson.

In October 2013, Indian coastguards boarded their vessel and arrested them along with 29 other crew members for taking weapons into India’s territorial waters.

The charges were initially quashed when the men argued the weapons were lawfully held for anti-piracy purposes and their paperwork, issued by the UK government, was in order.

But a lower court reinstated the prosecution and they were convicted in January last year and sentenced to five years in jail.

Since then there have been a series of appeals, including British Prime Minister Theresa May raising the matter with her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi during her visit to India in November 2016 as well as Britain’s High Commissioner in India, Dominic Asquith, visiting the men in jail in Chennai.

The sailors were aboard the American-owned ship which reportedly offered armed protection to vessels sailing through an area known as “pirates’ alley” between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

US firm ‘AdvanFort International’, which owns the ship, has maintained that the vessel was involved in anti-piracy operations and had not strayed into Indian waters.

Customs officials and police found 35 guns, including semi-automatic weapons, and almost 6,000 rounds of ammunition on board the ship, which allegedly did not have permission to be in Indian waters.