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“Diana dumped me”

LONDON: Princess Diana’s supposedly “secret” relationship with a Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, whom she met when he was working at a London hospital, has been one of the most written and talked about stories of her tempestuous life but it has now emerged that even her most authoritative biographers got one crucial fact wrong.

Contrary to claims, it was not Dr. Khan who broke off the relationship. It was Diana who “dumped” him after returning from a holiday with Dodi Fayed and his family in 1997 — barely months before she and Dodi were killed in a Paris car crash.

Dr. Khan, who married briefly after the break-up with Diana and lives in Pakistan, declined to appear personally before the inquest or give evidence through a video-link. But in a statement read to the court, he said when he met her after she returned from holiday he suspected that she had met “someone else” because she was “not her normal self”.

“At a second meeting, she said it was all over between us, but she denied there was anyone else,” he said adding that the first time he got to know of her relationship with Dodi was when he read it in the press.

The couple met in 1995 and had a two-year relationship. Diana famously described him as “Mr. Wonderful” and contemplated marrying him in secret.

Dr. Khan confirmed that Diana visited Pakistan to consider the possibility of living there if they married. “Later I got the impression she did not consider living there a possibility,” said Dr. Khan.

Dr. Khan did not want to live in Britain because he felt that media intrusion would make their life “hell”.

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