PESHAWAR: Sept 23: A love story came to a sad end when an old British woman died here on Sunday, apparently of a heart attack, after enjoying five days of married life with her 28-year-old Pakistani husband.

Ada Julia Patricia Collens, a 71-year-old resident of Manchester, had fallen in love with Mohammad Zafar through Internet and had come to Pakistan about a month ago. Julia married Zafar five days back.

Talking to Dawn on Monday, Zafar said that on Sunday night he and Julia were on their way in a taxi to a guest house in the University Town, where they had been staying since Sept 6, when her condition deteriorated.

He said Julia suffered a heart attack near the Peshawar Club and he took her to the Fauji Foundation Hospital, where she was given the first-aid. After 30 minutes, he said, she was pronounced dead.

Zafar has since been kept in the confinement at the West Cantonment police station till the postmortem report is issued.

“When she was brought in to the hospital she was dead. There was no apparent sign of torture on her body, but I cannot say about the cause of her death,” Dr Zovair Ahmad, who attended to Julia at the hospital, told Dawn.

SSP Khalid Habib said that the initial post-mortem had been done and there was no apparent sign of any torture on the body.

The cause of the death seemed to be cardiac failure, the SSP remarked and said that her heart had been sent to a laboratory in Lahore to determine the cause of death.

He said it would take at least a week to get the final post-mortem report. He said that Julia’s body was kept at the mortuary of Khyber Medical College.

It was in March when Julia, passport No 103766900, fell in love with Zafar through Internet and came to Pakistan a month ago and got married on Sept 17.

“She came to Islamabad where we stayed at the Shade Guest House and arrived in Peshawar on Sept 6 where I introduced her to my family before we got married,” Zafar said.

“Despite the fact that she was an old woman, I married her because we had established a very good understanding. During the last six months she had e-mailed me more than 160 times, which I have saved in my computer,” he said.

He claimed that Julia was a patient of high blood-pressure and had a breathing problem and found it hard going outside the guest house in the hot weather.

In reply to a question, Zafar said their love was genuine. “I was not eager to go to England after marrying her. I did not marry her for wealth as she was a poor woman. She came to Pakistan after borrowing some money from her friend.”