India, Oct. 30 -- The Bombay High Court has granted bail to a Ugandan national who was arrested at the Mumbai airport in 2022 after allegedly swallowing 91 capsules containing over 1kg of narcotics, holding that his detention for more than four years without any progress in the trial had become punitive.

A single-judge bench of justice Shyam C Chandak said that the accused's conditional liberty must take precedence over the stringent bail restrictions under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, despite there being a prima facie case against him.

"The applicant is in jail for more than four years. The trial against him has not advanced. In the absence of such advancement, his detention in jail is turning punitive," t...