106 aggravating and mitigating circumstances (in which commonality is to be drawn across cases), and arrive at individualized sentencing outcomes on a case-tocase basis.102 It was noted: “132. ….The imprecision of the identification of aggravating and mitigating circumstances has to be minimised. It is to be noted that the mandate of equality clause applies to the sentencing process rather than the outcome. The comparative review must be undertaken not to channel the sentencing discretion available to the courts but to bring in consistency in identification of various relevant circumstances. The aggravating and mitigating circumstances have to be separately identified under a rigorous measure. 133. Bachan Singh [(1980) 2 SCC 684 : 1980 SCC (Cri) 580] when mandates principled precedent-based sentencing, compels careful scrutiny of mitigating circumstances and aggravating circumstances and then factoring in a process by which aggravating and mitigating circumstances appearing from the pool of comparable cases can be compared. The weight which is accorded by the court to particular aggravating and mitigating circumstances may vary from case to case in the name of individualised sentencing, but at the same time reasons for apportionment of weights shall be forthcoming. Such a comparison may point out excessiveness as also will help repel arbitrariness objections in future. A sentencing hearing, comparative review of cases and similarly aggravating and mitigating circumstances analysis can only be given a go-by if the sentencing court opts for life imprisonment.” (emphasis supplied) 197. The strength of ‘precedent’ and ‘consistency’ is perhaps, therefore, lowest when it comes to matters of sentencing, as long as it is within the confines of legality and resulting in ‘principled sentencing’. In other words, the judicial incongruence when it relates to sentencing, would in fact be a positive indicator, rather than a negative one, provided it is still within the well-defined contours of ‘principled’ sentencing. For sentencing in capital offences, discretion to arrive at individualised sentences is encouraged, but must be constrained by the ‘rarest of rare’ principle, wherein the court considers aggravating circumstances of the crime, and mitigating circumstances of the criminal (a ‘liberal and expansive’ construction of the latter), which in turn must inform their consideration of whether the option of life imprisonment is unquestionably foreclosed owing to an impossibility103 to reform. 102 Santosh Bariyar (para 172) 103 held to be ‘probability’ and not ‘impossibility’ in Rajendra Pralhadrao Wasnik v. State of Maharashtra, (2019) 12 SCC 460.