I do agree with you that the error is reported by /bin/sh not the perl. The perl script has just two lines; first line is

and second line is

Thanks, Anand

The first two bytes of the file must be the characters #! You can not just have a few blank lines above your #!/usr/bin/perl line.

This is a shell script (with line numbers showing), not a Perl script:

     1
     2  #!/usr/bin/perl
     3
     4  echo This is really a shell script!
[download]

If the first two bytes of the file are not #! then the system default shell will interpret the commands in the file. Thus, your error.

Seriously, dude, you need to learn the basics of your Unix shell.

dos2unix

#!/usr/bin/perl  --

#!/usr/bin/perl -w  --

Seriously, read the FAQs linked