Ethnic Tamils trickled back into Sri Lanka's capital today, two days after the Supreme Court overturned a police drive to evict hundreds of them as part of a crackdown against LTTE rebels.

The government brought men, women and children back from Vavuniya, 260 kms north of Colombo, after President Mahinda Rajapakse invited them and ordered disciplinary action against the police chief.

“Most came for medical treatment or to secure employment to go overseas,” said a police official who was involved in Thursday’s operation to evict Tamils.

The officer said over 150 people have returned out of the more than 350 forcibly evicted on Thursday in the pre-dawn swoop. Armed policemen and troops had forced minority Tamils on to buses and taken them away.

“We were asked to go back to our villages, but the government dropped us off at a detention camp in Vavuniya,” said Jainthi (64), a resident of Jaffna. “I came to Colombo for medical treatment while I waited for embassy papers to go to my son in Canada,” she said.