Perhaps that Mahabharata story is apocryphal. Lots of these stories are told from the point of view of mundane morals – the sage was cast to hell and it’s a bad thing, “obviously”, but we don’t know what really happened or if it happened at all. Mahabharata has been hopelessly corrupted in this regard. Are there any legitimate examples from say, Srimad Bhagavatam, of deontologic vs conseuquentialist contradictions? It just doesn’t seem to happen in our literature.