This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on October 8, 2015.

KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Dr Jeyaindran Sinnadurai, who heads the panel of specialists treating former opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, has denied rumours of his transfer to another department.

The deputy director-general of health said he was due to visit Anwar, who has several health complications, including irregular blood pressure, a growth on the kidney, gastritis, a shoulder muscle tear and chronic arthritis.

“I’m still here, and tomorrow, I’ll be going to prison to visit Anwar,” he said when contacted by The Malaysian Insider on Tuesday.

He was asked to comment on speculation that he would be transferred and no longer head the team of 17 specialists treating Anwar.

In recent weeks, Anwar’s family and lawyers have demanded that Dr Jeyaindran be dropped from the panel and as the jailed PKR leader’s physician.

They claimed he would not be able to treat Anwar professionally as he had been a prosecution witness in Anwar’s first sodomy trial.

The family also wanted Anwar to be warded immediately and allowed to consult an orthopaedic surgeon of his choice.

Anwar began serving a five-year jail term in Sungai Buloh jail after the Federal Court upheld his sodomy conviction in February.

He was convicted of sodomising his former aide, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, in 2008. This was the second sodomy trial since his sacking from government in 1998. — The Malaysian Insider