The Madhya Pradesh high court ordered ₹10 lakh compensation for an engineer’s unlawful detention after security at the Bhopal airport wrongly flagged packets of dried mango powder and spices in his luggage as narcotics, 16 years ago, in 2010.The closure report in the case said the detector machine suffered a technical malfunction. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)The ordeal began in May 2010 when Ajay Singh, the engineer, was preparing to board a flight to Delhi. A scan of his luggage wrongly indicated traces of heroin and Methyldiethanolamine.Singh’s lawyer, Ajay Gupta, said a case was registered at Gandhi Nagar Police Station in Bhopal, and Singh was arrested. “The seized powders were sent to the Regional Forensic Laboratory, which lacked the equipment to conduct the necessary analysis. Ten days later, the samples were sent to the Central Forensic Laboratory in Hyderabad. On June 30, 2010, the Hyderabad lab confirmed that no banned substances were present,” said Gupta. He said Singh was released on bail on July 2, 2010, but only after nearly two months in jail.Justice Deepak Khot of the Madhya Pradesh high court on Tuesday called Singh’s detention a violation of his fundamental rights. He questioned the rationale for maintaining infrastructure without basic equipment. Justice Khot directed the state chief secretary to inspect all forensic science laboratories within a month to ensure proper facilities and staffing.Gupta said the identification of amchur and garam masala as drugs led to his client’s arrest under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and 57-day judicial custody, despite his innocence.The closure report submitted in the case said the Explosives Trace Detector machine suffered a technical malfunction and that Singh’s detention was the result of incompetence and inexperience. Singh was acquitted on December 2, 2010.In 2011, Singh filed a petition seeking ₹10 crore compensation, disciplinary action against the officials involved, blacklisting of the company that supplied the faulty machine, and reforms to ensure proper detection systems and trained personnel at airports.