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 Municipality walked into the sales S. of the mill, asked for 375 grams of khurasani oil from accused No. 8, appellant in Criminal Appeal No. 315. The quantity required was supplied and; thereafter, the Foo,d Inspector went through the statutory exercises preparatory to an analysis by the Public Analyst. After receiving the report of the analyst to the effect that the sample of khurasani oil sent for analysis contained 30% of groundnut oil which amounted to a contravention of Rule 44(e) of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Rules (for short, the rules), a complaint was lodged for selling adulterated food within the meaning of S. 2(i) of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act (hereinafter called the Act) read with S. 7(1) and 16(l)(a) and Rule 44(e). Evidence was led to make out a prima facie case. The accused were questioned under S. 342 Criminal procedure code. and the appellants confidently pleaded guilty to the charge whereupon the trial Magistrate, perhaps agreeably to expectations sentenced them each to a piffling fine of Rs. 250.00. Although the whole process in court is strongly suggestive of a tripartite consensual arrangement and reminds one of plea-bargaining procedures in the United States of America, the State government appears to have taken a serious view of the matter, outraged as it was by the magistrates adroit avoidance of those penal provisions which obligate him to inflict a minimum prison sentence, viz.. S. 2(i)(a) and S. 16(1) with a view to apply the proviso to S. 16(I). This is. at best, a conjecture about the magistrate and might as well be imputed to the prosecutor and the food inspector. However, the State filed a revision to the High court against the illegal and ultra-lenient impost. The revisional Judge converted the offence into one under S. 2(i)(a) read with S. 16(1) and enhanced the sentence to the minimum of six months and Rs. 1,000.00 by way of fine on the ground that the offence committed by the accused squarely fell within S. 16(l)(a) and did not fall within the proviso of that provision which vests a guarded discretion in the court to soften the sentence to special cases. The appellants, shocked by this drastic reversal of fortune at the High courts hands, have sought restoration of the magistrates conviction and sentence. If this aggravated conviction is correct, the enhanced punishment is inescapable.

(3) THE circumstances leading up to and constituting the offence have been briefly set out already and the divergence between the trial court and the High court turns on the legal inference to be drawn from the factual matrix. Has there been adulteration of food. in the sense imputed to that expression by S. 2(i)(a) ? Assuming it falls under S. 2(i)(l) of the definition, does that factor exclude it from S. 2(i)(