I often see "the same" used regularly in discourse from and among South Asian speakers of English, particularly among speakers of IndE, as in
I visited the tiger preserve in Ranthambore, and I highly recommend the same.
But in my experience with speakers of American and British English, it's hardly ever used.
Is there any population of native speakers of English (i.e. populations who have English as their first, and typically only, language1) which uses this construction regularly? Perhaps in some sub-population of Britain or one of its historical colonies, like Australia, New Zealand, et al?
Or is this principally an IndE usage?
NB: I'm particularly looking for authoritative references, perhaps from corpora, academic studies, or other reference works, rather than anecdotal data.