Five Sri Lankan fishermen have been arrested on charges of stealing an Indian tsunami warning equipment, police said on Tuesday.

The arrested men were produced before the chief magistrate in the southern town of Matara, who remanded them in custody till April 30, police spokesman Ajith Rohana said.

The men had earlier told the police that they were unaware of the tsunami warning buoy's purpose in the Indian Ocean but took its possession due to its ornamental value.

The equipment was found abandoned in the southern coastal Gandara area on March 27, two weeks before a massive 8.6 magnitude earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra island triggered tsunami alerts around the Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka had witnessed devastation during the December 2004 tsunami which had claimed 31,000 lives in the island nation

The Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis buoy was part of a wider warning system that had been deployed in deep sea to detect unusual rise in sea levels and predict tsunamis.

"The Indian authorities complained to us that one of their buoys had been cut from the moorings and removed," said Sarath Lal Kumara, the Disaster Management Centre spokesman.