V.R.KRISHNA IYER, J.

(1) JUDICIAL fluctuations in sentencing and social seriousness in punishing have combined to persuade Parliament to prescribe inflexible, judge-proof, sentencing minima in the food adulteration law. This deprivatory punitive strategy sometimes inflicts harsher-than-deserved compulsory imprisonment on lighter offenders, the situation being beyond judicial discretion even if prosecution and accused consent to an ameliorative course. The two appeals, by special leave, partially illustrate this proposition. Khurasani oil is an edible oil extracted by crushing oilseeds in mills. Groundnut oil, also edible, is expressed likewise. A firm by name Balmukand Hiralal Loya And Co., in a minor town in Maharashtra, runs an oil mill where khurasani oil and groundnut oil are manufactured by the firm. Sometimes they crush oilseeds for others on hire who pay milling charges.

(2) THE appellants in Criminal Appeal No. 314 are the managing partner and the manager of the mill and the appellant in Criminal Appeal No. 315 is the operator of the expeller in the mill who actually sold the offending commodity. On 16/02/1972 the Food Inspector of Bhagur Munici