INDERJEET Vs. STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The adventurous petitioner imaginatively challenges the vires of Section 7 read with Section 16 of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act and the relevant rules framed thereunder. The gravamen of his charge is that the above provisions, read together, impose an inflexible minimum sentence of six months' R.I. if the offender is guilty of sale of adulterated food, excluding in the process even the need to prove mens rea in the accused. This absolute liability, with mandatory sentence, dependent on sophisticated chemical tests and complicated formulae, is oppressively unreasonable in the illiterate, agrestic realities of little Indian retail trade. Such, in one sentence, is the submission of counsel.

(2.) The primary props to support this broad submission may be briefly noticed. Counsel complains that there is no classification as between injurious pollutants and innocuous adulterants while prescribing the sentence. Nor is there any intelligent differentiation between petty dealers and giant offenders, and vendors, big and small, are put on the Procrustean bed of stern punishment alike. Articles 14, 19 and 21 are the constitutional artillery employed by counsel to shoot down the said provisions of the Act.

(3.) Frankly, we are not impressed with the consternation about the constitutionality even if the protential for victimisation affecting smaller people may be real and elicit our commiseration. We may dwell for a moment on the latter grievance against the law a little later. First, we will repel the vice of unconstitutionality.