LONDON: Revealing the reason behind her much hyped divorce with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Imran Khan, former BBC weathergirl Reham Khan Friday said she parted ways with the cricketer-turned politician for a ‘grander cause’, Samaa reported.
“Lies were being told about me and my children… Painful, appalling, and insufferable lies,” Reham Khan said in a text sent to Samaa TV’s senior anchorperson Nadeem Malik.
Carrying on her argument, she said those prevarications had also started affecting the PTI chief’s politics.
“Those falsehoods were proving to be hurdles in the way of Khan’s mission. So I decided to remove myself from his life gracefully,” Reham said.
Khan, 62, married 42-year-old Reham Khan, a former BBC weather host and a divorced mother of three, in January this year in a simple ceremony at his Islamabad home.
“We have decided to part ways and file for divorce,” Reham Khan said in a brief statement on her Twitter account Friday.
Imran Khan tweeted that it was a “painful time” and that he has “the greatest respect for Reham’s moral character & her passion to work for & help the underprivileged”.
Naeem ul Haque, Imran Khan’s spokesman told AFP the decision to divorce was mutual.
“It’s a painful and personal matter, so I won’t be able to comment more or state any reason for it,” he said.
Loved by millions across the cricket-obsessed nation for winning Pakistan its only World Cup in 1992, Khan’s sporting prowess and rugged good looks also brought him international celebrity in a country lacking glamour.
He was considered his country’s most eligible man until he suddenly announced his plans to marry shortly after launching a movement to topple the government in August 2014, which he called off in December after a Taliban attack on a school that killed 150 people.Reham Khan, host of a local TV talk show, was widely criticised after she appeared at public meetings of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) party, with opponents accusing her of seeking to boost her own profile through her husband’s fame.
She found particularly harsh reception in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, governed by PTI.
She also sparked controversy after it emerged that she had not actually attended a college where she claimed to be a student on her website.
There had been reports Imran Khan’s family was unhappy with his choice of bride.
Imran Khan is the father of two sons from his previous marriage to British socialite Jemima Khan (nee Goldsmith).
Born in 1952 in Lahore into a comfortable family with origins in the Pashtun northwest, he was educated at Aitchison College, the Eton of Pakistan, boarding school in England, and then Oxford University.
He became one of the world’s greatest ever all-rounders — a fearsome fast bowler and dangerous batsman — whose finest hour came at the 1992 World Cup, where at the age of 39 he led an inexperienced team to the title.
Off the pitch, he had a string of socialite girlfriends and frequented exclusive nightclubs in London until he married Jemima Goldsmith, the daughter of the French-British tycoon James, in 1995.
She converted to Islam and the couple moved in with his family in Lahore.
They divorced in 2004, allegedly over the difficulties Jemima faced in Pakistan, where she was hounded for her family’s Jewish ancestry, and his obsession with politics
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