LK Advani

New Delhi, June 10: Even in death, Benazir Bhutto hasn’t ceased to be controversial.

Months after Bhutto was assassinated, her political biography Goodbye Shahzadi — written by Indian journalist Shyam Bhatia who went to Oxford with her — has raised a storm in Pakistan.

“She had participated in the negotiations to give Pakistan’s nuclear bomb details to North Korea in exchange for missile technology from Pyongyang,” Bhatia had written in his column in The Indian Express after the assassination.

In the book, Bhatia reveals details of this conversation he said he had with her in 2003 but promised to keep secret during her lifetime.

Bhutto’s People’s Party of Pakistan has denied she spoke to the journalist, and L.K. Advani who released the book last month has made it known he had not read it.

PPP spokesperson Farhatullah Babar told PTI the party is considering legal action against Bhatia for the “tasteless and scurrilous allegations” made in the book.

The party also expressed “surprise” that BJP leader Advani — “a friend of Benazir Bhutto” — had launched the book in Delhi.

Publisher Pramod Kapoor said: “As far as the political side is concerned, I am not the competent person to answer…. This is not the first time that Shyam has written about this aspect. He is a senior journalist and has hundreds of hours of tapes of interviews with her.”

But the claim that she spilled nuclear secrets is not the only one that has angered Bhutto’s party. References to boyfriends she is supposed to have had at Oxford and to Bhutto plucking her eyebrows before marriage have also caused displeasure.

“These were irrelevant to her political biography and do not add anything to the story,” Kapoor said, regretting hurting the Bhutto family. “The sentiments in India and Pakistan are different.”

Bhutto, who is believed to have lived like a regular student in Oxford, became the epitome of the demure Pakistani woman as politician, with her hair discreetly covered. Her family and her party would not want that picture perfect political legacy sullied by references to her past.

Goodbye Shahzadi, released across the border almost simultaneously, has an “unusually high number of copies” circulating in Pakistan.

Advani, who shared the Sindhi connection with Benazir, has “regretted” his decision to release the book.

Although he was sent a copy one week earlier — Advani’s office confirmed this — the BJP leader said he had not read the book. In a statement issued yesterday, he said a cursory glance revealed some pages were “slightly surprising”.

BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said: “He expressed his displeasure with the author later. Benazir was a friend who he was reasonably close to, and such content would have upset anyone.”

Rudy said Advani understood why people would object to his being present at the book release.

In Pakistan, Babar said: “We would have expected him (Advani) to see the contents of the book and then decide whether to participate in the launch.”