(delivering the judgment of the Court): The appellant was tried and convicted on a charge under section 57(1)(a) Internal Security Act No. 82, of having under his control, without lawful excuse, literally, an arsenal — some 16 firearms of various types, all previously stolen in a daring raid on the Police Station at Peranang.

He had been arrested in connection with some other investigation and, in the usual manner, he was subjected to a series of interrogation. The interrogation was in this instance conducted by an officer who was not without some knowledge of psychology. This officer spent the first two sessions on reaching a measure of rapport with the accused and it was only at the third session that, in his words as recorded by the trial judge, "the accused admitted burying weapons somewhere and offered to show me the place."

In the events that happened, the officer promptly informed his superior officer, a police party was mounted, and with the accused, it went to the accused's fruit plantation at Kampong Gebok where he pointed at five spots on the ground — one at a time. From these spots, the police in the presence of the accused recovered all the weapons listed in the charge.

The prosecution at the trial relied almost entirely on this evidence and it was on this evidence that the accused was convicted. The defence, both at the trial and before us, was that having regard to the provisions of section 27 of the Evidence Act, 1950, which reads as follows:

"27. When any fact is deposed to as discovered in consequence of information received from a person accused of any offence in the custody of a police officer, so much of that information, whether the information amounts to a confession or not, as relates distinctly to the fact thereby discovered may be proved."

the evidence that the accused had admitted burying the weapons should not have been let in, since in contravention of the provisions of section 27, it was not in the actual words used by the accused.

This is a very narrow point. Counsel for the appellant did not, perhaps because he could not, contest the fact that the weapons in the charge were recovered as a result of information given by the accused. Clearly not only the fact of discovery but also so much of the information as led to the discovery was admissible. The trial judge relied, in our view and, with respect, correctly, on the following passage from the judgment of the Privy Council in The Queen v Murugan Ramasamy [1965] AC 1 at page 14 on appeal from the Supreme Court of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) on a parallel provision of the law, section 27 of the Evidence Act:

"There can be no doubt as to what is the general purpose of sections 25 and 26. It is to recognise the dangers of giving credence to self-incriminating statements made to policemen or made while in police custody, not necessarily because of suspicion that improper pressure may have been brought to bear for the purpose of securing convictions. Police authority itself, however carefully controlled, carries a menace to those brought suddenly under its shadow; and those two sections recognise and provide against the danger of such persons making incriminating confessions with the intention of placating authority and without regard to the truth of what they are saying.

Section 27, on the contrary, envisages a situation in which circumstances themselves vouch for the truth of certain statements made by an accused person, even though they are made in conditions that would otherwise justify suspicion. These are those statements that have led to the actual discovery of a proven fact when the information supplied by the accused has been the cause of the discovery."

It is clear and beyond argument that the statement of the accused in this case that "he admitted burying weapons somewhere and offered to show me the place" was the information supplied by the accused that had been the cause of the proven discovery. It was a statement that was