New DElhi, June 27 -- The Supreme Court has ruled that appellate courts can increase a sentence in an accused's own appeal if the punishment awarded by the trial court was illegal and fell below the minimum prescribed by law. In a judgment released on Thursday, a bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan upheld a Sikkim High Court decision that increased the sentence of two men convicted of gang rape from 12 years to 20 years imprisonment, even though the enhancement occurred while deciding appeals filed by the convicts themselves. The court clarified that such an exercise does not amount to an impermissible enhancement of sentence under appellate powers. Rather, it is a correction of an illegal sentence that was contrary to a statut...