Judgment

V. R. KRISHNA IYER, J. :- Concurrent convictions by both the courts below have, by a rule of restriction and cirumspection which this court often adopts under Art. 136, persuaded me to circumscribe the leave to appeal to the critical question of punishment, usually answered by courts untouched by current humane criteria and drowned in the superstition that the gravity of the crime and the tariff prescribed in the Penal Code have a monopolistic hold on the sentencing court. Quackery in criminology is a deficiency in forensic justicing - especially disastrous in sensitive areas like juvenile sentencing when unfettered punishment becomes unwitting crime.

2. The present case is an illustration of judicial habituation to prescribing sentences conditioned by the offence and its milieu, forgetting the fundamental fact that the human delinquent, not the criminal deviance (sic), is the cynosure of punitive processing. The further Gandhian axiom follows that crime is like disease, and correction, not cruelty has dominance in the sentencing calculus. The sadistic appeal to severity of infliction takes on a sublimated form in the judicial process, as has happened in the instant case. Th