Reading a file with utf8 data

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Monks,
I am using perl version 5.6.1
I have a problem in reading a file having unicode characters.
Please let me know how can i handle this data.

Is there any possible may to open the file in utf8 format as we use in perl5.8 + versions like
open(IN,"<:utf8","sample.txt");

Thanks

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