Political leaders are unlucky in many ways. One being – controversies and gossips do not spare them even in death. Or so it appears as a new book – a biography on Pakistan cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan is said to shed “ample light on an alleged affair between the cricketer and former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto”.
The spoken off fling dates back to the time when both were students at the fabled Oxford University, the book goes on to say. Not to stop at what many would pass as a “romantic bonding” the writer, Christopher Sandford is learnt to have detailed how the two Pakistanis enjoyed each others company, something which bordered somewhere between romance and possible sexual encounters.
The book is also learnt to have inputs that suggest that late mother of the former cricketer, Shaukat Khanum was all in for the relationship and was even inclined towards formalizing it. The writer, it is learnt, has gone on to write that she had suggested that the two tie the nuptial.
The writer has interviewed both Khan and his ex-wife Jemima and during the course of his book is said to have interacted with many common friends of Bhutto and Khan. Khan who after a very succesful stint with international cricket and later formed a political party by the name of Tehreek-e-Insaf was always at loggerheads with Benazir’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) politically.
The book however reveals that it was Bhutto who first nick names Imran as the “Lion of Lahore”. British newspaper the Telegraph has also quoted the writer as discovering during his research for the biography that “in any event, it seems fairly clear that for at least a few months the couple enjoyed proximity and that there was a lot of giggling etc when the two were out in public”.
Sandford goes on to say that the relationship in all likelihood was sexual since most believed that Imran Khan slept with almost everyone and hence there must have been no exception for Ms Bhutto. Imran Khan however is reported to have trashed theories of a sexual relationship with the former Pakistani prime minister who was assassinated on December 27, 2007.
