LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Dr Shahbaz Gill, who had allegedly disappeared from a VVIP room of Services Hospital on Friday afternoon, returned to the facility on Saturday.

Mr Gill, who is also PTI chief Imran Khan’s chief of staff, was admitted to the hospital earlier this month owing to shortness of breath. He was reportedly having difficulty breathing and coughing.

Services Hospital Medical Unit-II Registrar Dr Nauman Zafar had issued an absence report to the medical superintendent that Mr Gill had disappeared from a VVIP room of the facility without informing the management.

The letter stated that during a visit to the VVIP room for Gill’s regular follow-up, he was found “no longer admitted to the hospital”, adding no file or record could be “retrieved” from the ward.

Meanwhile, Punjab government’s spokesperson Musarrat Jamshed Cheema rejected the disappearance report, claiming Dr Gill was still under treatment at Services Hospital.

“A day earlier, he went to a private orthopaedic for a check-up for some time,” she claimed on Twitter.

Sources claimed the PTI leader had gone ‘missing’ from the hospital on Friday morning and returned on Saturday evening. “Mr Gill ran away from the hospital after Governor Balighur Rehman removed Chief Minister Parvez Elahi from office,” he said. He further said Gill returned after the Lahore High Court restored Mr Elahi and his cabinet.

Dr Gill was facing a number of cases since his controversial comments about the military establishment on a private TV channel. He was also not hospitalised for the first time. Earlier, he was shifted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences Islamabad after his health deteriorated in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail in September.

Balochistan Police had also summoned Gill in connection with a sedition case registered against him in Qila Abdullah under seven sections of Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act 2016.

Another case was registered in Karachi against him for inciting the public against a state institution earlier this month. A citizen, Muhammad Saeed, lodged the first information report against Gill at the Brigade police station for speaking against former army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2022