MUMBAI, 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," the court said, while granting bail to the accused, Isma Opaka Wandera. It added that prolonged detention made the presumption of innocence meaningless and undermined Wandera's right to life and liberty. On July 17, 2022, officers of the Air Intelligence Unit at the Mumbai airport intercepted Wandera after receiving information that he might have ingested drugs. He allegedly admitted during questioning that he had swallowed capsules containing narcotics and complained of severe stomach pain. Wandera was then taken to Sir JJ Hospital, where he expelled 91 oval-shaped capsules over three days. The powder recovered from the capsules weighed 1,101.8 grams, according to the prosecution. A laboratory test detected cocaine, heroin, codeine, morphine and caffeine. Wandera was arrested and charged under the NDPS Act....