Home and penniless, the Shirley Valentine of Sri Lanka
IT was supposed to be the start of a new life on a tropical island with the man of her dreams.
But just two years after spending her life savings on a move to Sri Lanka, Diane De Zoysa has fled back to Scotland having seen her husband murdered and his family drain her bank account.
The 60 year old spent her entire £90,000 life savings on a move to the island after striking up a Shirley Valentine-style romance with a Sri Lankan hotel worker 34 years her junior.
However, her dream retirement ended in tragedy after her husband, Priyanjana De Zoysa, 26, was shot dead by gangsters last year.
The former council worker said that following his death, her husband’s family refused to let her sell the house she had bought, effectively kept her under ‘house arrest’ and demanded money.
Yesterday, she said: ‘I have come home with nothing except for a few clothes. I only have a small pension to live on.’
Mrs De Zoysa spoke out about her ordeal after returning to Scotland this week.
She said: ‘I just couldn’t stay there any longer. I kind of feel stupid now that I didn’t listen to my family and my friends because they said it was just about the money.
‘I thought he did really love me but obviously he didn’t.’
Mrs De Zoysa, who is from Musselburgh, East Lothian, met Priyanjana during a holiday in Sri Lanka six years ago and married him just seven months later.
She moved to Sri Lanka in 2016 and paid £57,000 for a house to be built close to her husband’s family in Ahungalla, around 60 miles south of the capital Colombo.
And she also spent £31,000 on a minibus so that Priyanjana could make a living as a driver.
But on May 30 last year he was shot by blackmailers who had learned he had come into money. Mrs De Zoysa believes that her husband’s killers were trying to extort cash from him.
Speaking in June, she said: ‘His friend told me they were jealous because he was rich.
‘They were jealous because he had a nice a house, a minibus and a tuk-tuk. They blackmailed him. He did give them some money but they wanted more. Because he didn’t give them more, they shot him. They must have gone looking for him.’
Since her husband was killed, Mrs De Zoysa has been trying to find a lawyer who could help her to sell the property that she funded.
However, the house is registered in the name of her husband’s family, who refused to help her sell it.
She said she managed to escape the family’s clutches earlier this month and stayed with friends before leaving Sri Lanka and making a 20-hour journey back to Edinburgh.
Mrs De Zoysa said: ‘My husband’s family virtually had me under house arrest for two years. I couldn’t go anywhere – not even to the beach.
‘They weren’t happy I was leaving and put a complaint in to the local police because I was leaving with all my property but I managed to get away to stay with friends.
‘They weren’t happy because they wouldn’t get any more money from me.’
Mrs De Zoysa, who suspects her husband had a second wife because of paperwork she found in his personal belongings, says she has run up thousands of pounds in debt trying to support Priyanjana’s family.
Earlier this year, she spoke of how she feared she would die in Sri Lanka after being struck down by a number of heat-related medical complaints.
She said that despite making several appeals to the British High Commission, they were unable to help her, although the Foreign and Commonwealth Office did offer her advice.
Mrs De Zoysa now hopes to find a lawyer who will be able to help her claw back some assets, having invested all of her savings into the move to Sri Lanka.
She added: ‘I have nothing and still owe my credit card £4,000. I’m still trying to pay that off. It’s just impossible. I will have to try to find work.
‘I can’t live on my pension here – it’s not enough. But I’m just glad to be home.’
‘I thought he did really love me’