KARACHI, Oct 22: The prosecution sought perjury proceedings against a complainant as he turned hostile before an anti-terrorism court on Monday in an extortion case.

Saifullah, Hainullah and Asadullah, said to have some political affiliation, have been charged with extorting money from complainant Hashim Khan by putting him in the fear of death within the remit of the Sohrab Goth police station in Nov last year.

The complainant, a garment dealer, appeared before the ATC-III and recorded his statement.

While testifying under oath, he narrated his ordeal, but expressed his inability to identify the accused by stating that he had not seen them properly owing to darkness.

The public prosecutor, Abdul Maroof, informed the court that the complainant had named the accused persons, stated to have seen them and also assigned their roles in the commissioning of the alleged offence in the FIR and he maintained the same in his statement recorded by the police under Section 161 of the criminal procedure code.

He requested the court to declare the witness hostile under the Qanun-e-Shahadat Order, 1984 since he deviated from his previous stance and grant permission to cross-examine him.

Judge Ghulam Mustafa Memon of the ATC-III declared the complainant hostile and allowed the prosecutor to question him.

During the cross-examination, the witness owned the contents of the FIR, but denied admitting that he moved away from his previous statement because of any fear and insecurity or the fact that he and the accused had same ethnic background.

The prosecutor also submitted an application in court, seeking perjury proceedings against the complainant, under Section 193 (punishment for false evidence) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

According to the prosecution, the accused had dropped a letter at the house of the complainant through which they demanded Rs200,000 protection money. They also made telephone calls to threaten the complainant in case their demand was not met.

The amount was settled at Rs50,000 and the same was delivered to the accused by the complainant after consulting the police on Nov 3, 2011. However, the accused put up resistance when a waiting police team tried to apprehend them, but they were held after an exchange of gunfire that also left one of the accused injured, it added.