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. Staff Reporter