An appeals court in Argentina has ordered a judge to reopen a criminal investigation into Jeremy Clarkson’s infamous drive through the country for Top Gear with a number plate apparently referring to the Falklands war, with prosecutors seeking a three-year sentence.

Clarkson, who later left the BBC show after punching a producer, sparked anger in October last year when he drove through Argentina on a 1,400-mile road trip for a Christmas special in a Porsche with the number plate H982 FKL. The plate was changed to HI VAE and the car abandoned as a mob chased the BBC crew.

It is an offence to change a licence plate and an investigation was launched after complaints from Falklands war veterans. Judge Maria Cristina Barrionuevo had previously concluded that the Top Gear team had not acted in “bad faith” in changing the plates and their hand was forced by “massive government and popular pressure”.

She decided not to press ahead with a full-scale criminal investigation, but the case against Clarkson and the Top Gear crew has now been reopened by the court of appeals of Argentina’s southernmost province of Tierra del Fuego, acting on an appeal by Argentinian veterans of the 1982 war.

The specific charge by prosecutor Daniel Curtale against Clarkson is of “falsifying, altering or suppressing the number of a legally registered object”, because he switched the offending plates.

The Top Gear team ended up having to cut short filming and flee the country with a police escort after being told to leave by angry locals who stormed their five-star hotel in Ushuaia and threatened to kill Clarkson. The presenter and his co-hosts flew to Buenos Aires before returning to Britain.

The court’s decision raises the prospect of Clarkson, as well as former co-hosts Richard Hammond and James May, being summoned to give evidence in the city they fled.

It would take years for the case to reach this stage. Argentina would have to first request Clarkson and his former crew members be extradited before they could be brought before the court in Ushuaia, a lengthy judicial and political process that would involve Argentina’s foreign ministry sending the extradition requests to Britain and alerting Interpol for their arrest.

In the reopening of the case, the prosecutor is asking for the maximum three-year sentence based on article 289 of the Argentinian penal code, which recommend custodial sentences of between six months and three years for switching number plates on a car.

A Falklands war veteran Osvaldo Hillar prompted the court case by filing an official complaint over the number-plate incident. He has already been called to give evidence.

Speaking after news that proceedings had been re-opened, Hillar, who is a spokesman for the Malvinas Veterans Centre, remained adamant the case be brought to trial. “We believe that the Top Gear crew changed the plates in the full knowledge that what they were doing was illegal,” he said.

Malvinas is the Spanish name for the Falkland islands.

Former Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman admitted in a blog that they had removed the offending plate and put up the H1 VAE plate to quell growing unrest shortly after his return to Britain. The BBC has consistently denied suggestions the Porsche was bought for its number plate, or the plate was changed after it was purchased.

The BBC decided not to renew Clarkson’s contract after he attacked Top Gear producer Oison Tymon in March at a North Yorkshire hotel. Hammond and May subsequently announced they would not return to the programme. The trio are now working on their new Amazon Prime show.

• This article was amended on 30 October 2015. An earlier version said incorrectly that the Porsche with the registration H982 FKL was red.