India, March 11 -- The Supreme Court has ruled that courts cannot order compensation while adjudicating a bail plea because they lack the jurisdiction to do so in bail proceedings. The ruling came while setting aside an Allahabad high court order directing the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) to pay Rs.5 lakh in damages to a man who was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for four months in a drug-related case.

A bench of justices Sanjay Karol and Manmohan emphasised that bail proceedings are strictly limited to the grant or refusal of bail and cannot be extended beyond the framework prescribed by the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), now replaced with the Bharatiya Nyaya Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).

"Time and again, the act of courts oversteppi...