Why Base64.decode for stringToBytes ?

[sayoojvalsan]

private byte[] stringToBytes(String string) {
byte[] bytes;
bytes = null;
try {
bytes = Base64.decode(string, Base64.DEFAULT);
} catch(IllegalArgumentException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return bytes;
}

Shouldn't this be -
byte[] b = string.getBytes();
byte[] b = string.getBytes(Charset.forName("UTF-8"));
byte[] b = string.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8); // Java 7+ only

Also shouldn't it be encode ? why decode ?