Shoe hurled at returning Musharraf in court (VIDEO)

A lawyer hurled a shoe — an extremely offensive act in South Asia — at returning ex-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf on Friday, as he headed to court to see his pre-arrest bail extended by 15 days.

The shoe missed Musharraf, who recently returned to Pakistan to considerable controversy after four years of self-imposed exile, and the offender was promptly escorted from court by plain clothed security, noted AFP.

Read more from GlobalPost: Musharraf: Back in Pakistan, but not better than ever

Musharraf had headed to court to request an extension to his pre-arrest bail of 15 days, which was granted to him. The former president has been charged in a number of criminal cases in his native land.

AFP writes that around 20 lawyers appeared to protest Musharraf's controversial return at the Sindh high court on March 29, calling him a dictator and demanding that he be hanged for his offenses.

This isn't the 69-year old Musharraf's first close call with a shoe: in 2011, another angered opponent threw a shoe at him in London, which also failed to hit the politician.

Musharraf hopes to win seats for his party in the upcoming Pakistani elections, but many observers feel that a comeback for the embattled former president is unlikely — as evidenced by the decidedly modest turnout at the Karachi airport when he flew in on March 24.

“I am feeling concerned about the unknown … there are a lot of unknown factors of terrorism and extremism, unknown factors of legal issues, unknown factors of how much I will be able to perform [In the elections],” Musharraf admitted before boarding the flight to Pakistan.