Chile's state television channel has reported that former president Salvador Allende may have been assassinated during the 1973 coup.
At the time, the country's military claimed the famous socialist leader had killed himself with an AK-47 given to him by former Cuban president Fidel Castro.
However, TVN's Special Report programme yesterday cast doubt on the claim, citing a top secret military report into Allende's death.
TVN said the military document was discovered in a home belonging to a military justice official that was destroyed in last year's earthquake.
After reviewing the report, two forensics experts told the programme that they were inclined to conclude that Allende was assassinated.
Investigators exhumed Allende's remains earlier this month as part of an inquiry into the former president's death 37 years ago. Allende died during a September 1973 military attack against the presidential palace that led to 17 years of dictatorial rule.
The Allende family requested the exhumation as part of a judicial investigation into whether the former leader was killed or took his own life during the coup.
The investigation has the support of opposing political coalitions, making it a symbol of Chile's democratic maturity, said Mauricio Morales, a political scientist at Diego Portales University in Santiago.
No such consensus existed immediately following the end of the dictatorship in the early 1990s, and a formal inquiry, at that time, would certainly have aggravated rifts between political parties and the military just as Chile's nascent democracy was taking root, he said.
Agencies