Rawalpindi, Aug 21 - Pakistani police have booked three men for posing as journalists and using the names of a private TV channel and a newspaper to blackmail residents of this garrison town adjacent to the federal capital Islamabad.

Quoting police sources, Online news agency said the cases were registered on the complaint of Kaneez Fatima, a resident of the Mohra Faqiraan Damiyal neighbourhood, who said that a man named Jaffar Shah had been extorting money from drug smugglers, mini cinema runners and other businessmen by posing as the crime reporter of a private TV channel.

She said that when the TV channel was contacted, it flatly denied Shah was its employee.

In her complaint, Fatima also named Iftikhar Hussain and Shahid Azeem as Shah's co-conspirators who claimed to be journalists of a newspaper and had threatened her and other residents of the neighbourhood.