The late Princess Diana’s Pakistani love interest Hasnat Khan is back in the news. This time, for being denied a job in a prestigious medical institute in Islamabad.Khan, a heart surgeon, was looking for a job in the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences after his return from London, but his plans were allegedly punctured by the powers-that-be.Following media reports that he was denied a job at the institute though his competence could not be questioned, Pakistan People’s Party leader and Health Minister Sherry Rehman has ordered a probe into the matter, The News reported on Thursday.Earlier this year, caretaker Health Minister Ejaz Rahim had tried to ease rules to facilitate Khan’s entry into PIMS, but the ministry’s joint secretary declared the doctor “ineligible”.Khan was reportedly keen to take over as project director of the Cardiac Surgery Facility at PIMS and was to get a salary of Rs 1,00,000 a month.Health Secretary Khushnood Lashari confirmed Khan had applied for a job, but he was not appointed. He said Khan did “not meet the relevant criteria required for the execution of the project”.Khan, 48, was a heart surgeon at Royal Brompton Hospital in London before he quit and returned to Pakistan. He also worked in Malaysia for a while. Khan met Diana at Royal Brompton Hospital when she visited a friend recovering from heart surgery. The two pursued a discreet two-year affair that finished a few months before her death in a car crash in 1997.Khan, whom Diana famously described as “Mr Wonderful”, was in the news earlier this week when he divorced Hadia Sher Ali, his Pakistani wife of 18 months. Khan had married 29-year-old Hadia in a lavish ceremony in Pakistan in May 2006. Though Khan blamed “multiple reasons” for his divorce, it is believed that Diana cast a shadow over his marriage even 10 years after her death.Khan and Ali filed an application for divorce in the Arbitration Council of Islamabad, which heard their case and issued the divorce certificate.The Princess’s closest friends described Khan, now 48, as the love of her life and spoke of her distress when he ended their relationship. He, however, is reticent about speaking of how much he may have meant to her or even how much she meant to him.
