An Indian businessman spent 57 days in prison after security equipment at a domestic airport flagged packets of common cooking spices as heroin, a court has ruled, awarding him £9,000 in compensation.
The man was travelling through Bhopal airport in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, en route to Malaysia via Delhi, when explosive trace detection machines indicated that packets of two common Indian spices – garam masala, an aromatic spice blend, and aamchur, a dried mango powder – contained heroin and a psychotropic substance.
He was arrested under India's Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and held in custody while samples were sent for testing. The regional forensic laboratory returned them after ten days, saying it lacked the equipment to test for the psychotropic substance flagged by the scanner.
The samples were then sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Hyderabad, which confirmed they contained no contraband. However, by that point, the man had been in jail for 57 days.
The Madhya Pradesh High Court, ruling on the case last month, found the state vicariously liable for the violation of the man's fundamental right to liberty.
Justice Deepak Khot said that while the initial arrest was made with reasonable grounds, the businessman could have been freed far sooner had the state's forensic infrastructure been adequate.
"When cases like this are sent for investigation to the regional forensic laboratory, no opinion was given, and finally, when the samples were sent to the central lab, it was found that it does not contain contraband, which took about 57 days of the petitioner's life suffered in jail for no fault on his part," the court said in its order.
The petitioner argued that the detection machine, manufactured in Canada, was not calibrated to handle aromatic Indian spices, which may have triggered a false positive.
23/05/2026 Stuti Mishra/Independent
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