But her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayad, killed alongside her in a car crash in Paris ten years ago, was not the father of the baby, a daily reported on Thursday.
LONDON: Princess Diana was "almost certainly" pregnant when she died but her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayad, killed alongside her in a car crash in Paris ten years ago, was not the father of the baby, a daily reported on Thursday.
"It is a near certainty that Diana was nine to ten weeks pregnant at the time she died, according to papers from the Paris Public Hospitals archives," the 'Daily Mail' quoted French investigative journalist Chris Laffaille as saying.
Laffaille claimed to have uncovered the evidence of the pregnancy -- a letter which was sent to the then French Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement -- from the archives of the hospital where the Princess was taken after the car crash on August 31, 1997.
"This document has never been claimed or proved to be a fake. If genuine, it would mean that Diana's unborn child wouldn't have been fathered by Dodi as she had not met him nine weeks before her death," he said.
Instead, the scribe said, the baby might have been conceived while the Princess of Wales was seeing the United Kingdom-based doctor Hasnat Khan.
Laffaille's claim came despite a categoric statement by John Burton, the former Royal Coroner present at the time of post-mortem examination on Diana, who had said: "She wasn't pregnant. I have seen into her womb."
But the former reporter with the magazine 'Paris Match' claimed he had conducted a detailed re-examination of all the evidence surrounding the car crash before coming to the conclusion.
The resulting book, 'Diana: The Inquiry They Never Published', is likely to be released later this month.
It is being described as one of many attempts to cash in ten years after the Princess' death but it also revives conspiracy theories that have plagued the investigation into how she died.
But, Laffaille has agreed with the verdict of the official French inquiry into the crash, that Diana and Dodi were both the victims of a high-speed drink-driving accident.
However, a spokesman for the Paris Public Hospitals dismissed the letter as a forgery. "Examination of this document has established with absolute certainty that it is a fake," he told the daily.
"It is ridiculous. Many of the medics who treated Diana remain at the hospital, and all deny the claims contained in this forged letter," the spokesperson said.
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