JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER, J.:— Seven dangerously ideological teenagers, politically impatient with the deepening injustice of the economic order and ebulliently infantile in their terrorist tactics, were sentenced to seven years in prison for the offence of having robbed the State Bank of a few thousand rupees with non-violent use of crude pistols and country bombs which, in the language of the Penal Code, amounts to dacoity - a grave property crime. They were duly prosecuted, convicted and awarded 2 1/2 years rigorous imprisonment. Appeals by the accused and the State ended in the enhancement of the sentence to seven years R. I. each.

2. We have, on a perusal of the judgment, under appeal and after hearing Sri Garg for the appellants, declined to demolish the conviction although the scenario of events is judicially disquieting. Why? Because in our adversary system and umpire tradition of the judicial process the weaker accused, sometimes anathematized as naxalite or by other unpopular appellation, is theoretically equal before the law but in real-life terms, thanks to practical handicaps, the scales of justice (not the Judges) tend to incline against him. Law is what law does, not wha