India, Aug. 7 -- Two Nepali brothers who spent 38 days in an Indian jail after being arrested while carrying fertiliser home for their farm have been released on bail, bringing an end to a weeks-long legal ordeal that has drawn attention to Nepal's chronic fertiliser shortages.

Suresh Prasad Singh, 55, and his elder brother Nagendra Prasad Singh, 60, of ward 5 of Balara Municipality in Sarlahi district were freed on Friday, two days after an Indian court granted them bail.

The brothers had crossed into the Indian border town of Sonbarsa on July 1 to buy fertiliser after failing to obtain it in Nepal during the peak paddy planting season.

Like many farmers across Nepal's southern plains, they had struggled to secure subsidised chemical ...