Marooned in paradise
Briton, 59, moved to Sri Lanka to marry local aged 26. But he’s been shot dead ... and she can’t come home because she gave him all her money
‘He wanted money all the time’
A BRITISH woman who sold her home and travelled to Sri Lanka to marry a man 33 years her junior says she is a ‘virtual prisoner’ in the country after her husband was shot dead.
Diane de Zoysa, 59, says she is penniless and heartbroken following the murder of 26-year- old Priyanjana de Zoysa on May 30.
Originally from Musselburgh in Scotland, Mrs de Zoysa moved to the small coastal town of Ahungalla in the south-west of the country last year after meeting her future husband on holiday six years ago.
At the time, he was a hotel worker. She returned to Sri Lanka seven months later when the couple were married, and they then embarked on a long-distance relationship.
Mrs de Zoysa is understood to have spent more than £ 100,000 after migrating to Sri Lanka in February last year, including buying a property and giving her husband £30,000 to set up a minibus business. The house is understood to have been bought in her husband’s name.
This week she claimed to be £1,000 in debt and is seeking legal advice over whether she can force her late husband’s family to give her the house. She says she is unable to return to Scotland because of her financial situation.
In a further twist, Mrs de Zoysa believes her husband might have already had a wife. She found a marriage certificate at home in Sinhalese showing the marriage of a man his age to an 18-year-old woman.
She told MailOnline: ‘I confronted him and he said it was his brother’s. I didn’t believe him. He wasn’t coming home at night. I suspect that when he wasn’t coming home he was staying with the other woman.’
Mrs de Zoysa admitted she had been foolish to part with so much money and said she was a ‘virtual prisoner’ in Sri Lanka. She added: ‘I should have realised it was just about the money.
‘My friends thought that he was just marrying me for the money. Once I came out here, he wanted money all the time.
‘But I really loved him and I thought he really loved me and I wanted to prove them wrong. I’ve never loved anybody the way I loved him. He was desperate for me to move out here.’ Mrs de Zoysa said a blackmail plot may have been behind her husband’s death, adding: ‘My husband and his family are very poor, so I have helped them.
‘I gave up everything to join my husband here. They thought he was a rich man as he had a nice house, a minibus and a tuk tuk. He paid them but they wanted more.’
She has posted tributes to her late husband and wrote on June 10: ‘Happy birthday for tomorrow, my darling husband. I wish you were here.’
In a separate Facebook posting, she told a friend: ‘He was at a friend’s house and two men on a moped must have followed him and he ran outside but they shot him twice in the heart and once in the stomach. They were jealous of him for having the house, van and tuk tuk. They wanted him dead for sure.
‘I didn’t have to identify his body. His mother did that. His body is here at his mother’s home. It doesn’t look like him – they put make-up on him.’
In a post from April last year, Mrs de Zoysa also told of her loneliness in Sri Lanka: ‘Unfortunately it’s not how I imagined it would be.
‘I am left alone all day and night. I hardly see my husband as he is always working. He is a taxi driver and this is a busy time. His family live next door but I only see them once or twice a day. His mother comes over to give me breakfast and makes me dinner every night. After I am fed she goes back to her own home. I am very lonely and so bored.’
Speaking at his home in Edinburgh, Mrs de Zoysa’s brother, Stewart Peebles, said: ‘None of the family here wanted her to go out there.
‘She’s stubborn and was in love with this guy so she put her house up for sale, left her job and moved out. She threw it all away for love.’
A police investigation into Mr de Zoysa’s death is understood to be ongoing. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: ‘Our High Commission in Sri Lanka is providing assistance.’