Don't Deny Diana Peace in Her Grave!

By Amba Charan Vashishth

Controversy is the staple food of our media. The latter thrives on arguments for and against. And that is why nothing, at least in western countries, appears to be final. A controversy that looks to be settling today gets raked up again with fresh leads given out by our investigative journalists and the new books that continue to hit the stands on old issues.

US President John F. Kennedy was killed in 1962, yet it appears the conclusions of none of the numerous investigations conducted and commissions of inquiry set up since then are final. Even after about 45 years of his death, we continue to hear of one lead or the other about the circumstances under which he was assassinated. Doubts persist about what actually happened the day he was shot dead.

The legendry actress Marylyn Monroe died a few years earlier. Investigative minds continue to churn out with new theories every other day that it was not a suicide, as is generally believed to be. It was a conspiracy; she was murdered. Numerous articles and books have appeared in the world.

Similar is the story of UK’s Prince Charles’s estranged wife late Princess Diana who died in a car crash in Paris a decade back. What has not appeared about the accident?

“It is a near certainty”, stated the Daily Express (London) quoting Chris Lafaille, the writer of the latest book called “Diana, The Inquiry They Never Published”, that “Diana was nine to 10 weeks pregnant at the time she died, according to papers from the Paris Public Hospitals archives.”

“The document dated August 31 1997 was sent to the then minister of the interior Jean-Pierre Chevenement, with copies to health minister Bernard Kouchner, foreign affairs minister Hubert Vedrine and Paris police chief Martine Monteil,” he said.

Lafaille’s claims address one of the key questions listed by coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, who is investigating Diana’s death over allegations that she was murdered in a criminal conspiracy.

The hearings will examine whether Diana feared for her life, whether she was pregnant and whether chauffeur Henri Paul was drunk or on drugs to answer public’s suspicions that she and Fayed were murdered by British agents because they were about to get engaged and she was pregnant.

Dodi Fayed’s dad Mohamed Al Fayed had always claimed that Diana was pregnant at the time of her death, but these reports have been dismissed by former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens in ‘Operation Paget’ after he was officiated to conduct an independent inquiry into Di’s death. The Harrods boss’ spokesman insisted that if there were any such evidences to support the claims, they should be submitted to the coroner.

The new revelations will raise further speculation as to who might have been the father to Diana’s unborn child as she had been holidaying with Dodi Fayed prior to the fatal crash in Paris, and many believe that Diana was 'pregnant' when she died
Princess Diana was "almost certainly" pregnant when she died, reported another London daily, The Daily Mail, but her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed, killed alongside her in a car crash in Paris ten years ago, was not the father of the baby, the daily reported on August 22. 2007.

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 categorical 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.

What does all this amount to?

She was earlier reported to be having an affair with her coach who taught her horse-riding, Army Officer James Hewitt.

She was having an affair with Dodi Al Fayed with whom she was reported to be going to announce her engagement, while carrying someone else’s baby in her womb because, as per the report, “she had not met him (Fayed) nine weeks before her death”. Instead, the scribe said, the baby might have been conceived while the Princess of Wales was seeing the United Kingdom-based doctor Hasnat Khan.

Royal romances are not something new, anywhere in the world. But here the story is not of a single romance, but of many.

Even late Princess Margret, the younger sister of the present British Queen Elizabeth II, did have a very hot romance that attracted numerous headlines about half a decade back to feed the insatiable hunger of our journalists for news and scoops. But when she failed to marry the man she loved, the matter ended. Her marriage afterwards made no headlines and sent no tongues gossiping later.

By moral standards of the West, royal romances may not be a crime, but in comparison to the conduct of Prince Charles, who ultimately married his old flame, she is made to look the chic, ever smiling beauty who flung her heart at many people.
Maybe, these investigative journalists and writers are doing so just to mint money out of these labours of theirs by feeding such stories which they try to paint them real and convincing, yet they are not doing justice to the darling of millions in Britain and the world over by presenting her in such a hue. They are making this idol of beauty and the ‘Queen of millions of hearts’ to fall from grace.

Whatever it may be, the quest for truth will, for ever, remain elusive, unending, proving tireless and tiring, at the same time, with reality continuing to remain buried under the debris of these reports and books. Diana did not have peace in about the last decade of her life. These writers will not let her have peace even in her grave. That is too cruel to her. ***