18 indispensable pre-requisites to render a confession made to the police admissible to a limited extent, by bringing into play the exception postulated under Section 27 of the Evidence Act. 23. In this regard, reference may be made to Bodhraj alias Bodha and others vs. State of Jammu & Kashmir 7, wherein this Court had observed that the requirement of ‘police custody’ is productive of extremely anomalous results and may lead to the exclusion of valuable evidence in cases where a person, after committing a crime meets a police officer and states the circumstances of the crime which lead to the discovery of the dead body, weapon or any other material fact, in consequence of the information thus received from him, and he is subsequently taken into custody and becomes an ‘accused’. This Court pointed out that this information, which would otherwise be admissible, becomes inadmissible under Section 26 of the Evidence Act as it did not come from a person in the ‘custody of a police officer’ or rather, came from a person not in the ‘custody of a police officer’. In other words, the exact information given by the accused ‘while in custody’, which led to recovery of the articles can be proved. It was noted that this doctrine is founded on the principle that if any fact is discovered as a search was made on the strength of any information obtained from a prisoner, such a discovery is a guarantee that the information supplied by the prisoner is true. 7 (2002) 8 SCC 45

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