Nimisha Priya Death Sentence: 'Nothing Much Govt Can Do', Centre Tells SC

With the execution of Kerala Nurse Nimisha Priya being scheduled on July 16, the Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that it had exhausted all the limited diplomatic options to secure the release or prevent the execution.

Attorney General R Venkataramani, who was representing the Centre, told a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta that, having regard to the sensitivity and status of Yemen as a place, there is nothing much the Government of India can do, PTI reported.

"There's nothing much the government can do. Looking at the sensitivity of Yemen, it's not diplomatically recognised. Blood money is a private negotiation", Venkataramani said while adding, "There is a point up to which the Government of India can go and we have reached that point."

According to reports, the family of the murdered man is unwilling to accept blood money, which is arguably the only option to prevent the impending execution.

Since 2017, Priya has been imprisoned in Yemen for the alleged murder of a Yemeni national, Talal Abdo Mahdi, after she injected him with sedatives in an attempt to retrieve her passport from his possession.

Nimisha is currently being held in Sana'a Central Prison, which reportedly falls within a Houthi-controlled Sana. Owing to diplomatic hurdles, government agencies and organisations working for her release have been unable to make any breakthrough.

"Yemen is not like any other part of the world. We didn't want to complicate the situation by going public. We are trying at a private level, some Sheikh, influential people there, all that is being done," the Attorney General told the court.

"There's no way we can get to know what's really happening. We have been trying utmost possible. It's not a matter where govt can be asked to do something beyond. It's very unfortunate," Attorney Venkataramani said.

About Nimish Priya

Nimisha Priya, a trained nurse from Kollengode in Palakkad district, left for Yemen in 2008 to help her daily wage labourer parents, says a Business Standard report.

Nimisha's husband and minor daughter returned to India in 2014 owing to financial reasons. In the same year, Yemen was gripped by civil war, and they were prohibited from going back as the country stopped issuing new visas.

Later in 2015, Nimisha got in touch with Mahdi to set up her clinic in as under Yemen's law, only nationals are allowed to set up clinics and business firms.

Before planning to start her own clinic, she worked in a few hospitals in the country. In 2017, she had a fallout with her local partner, Talal Abdo Mahdi, as he claimed alleged attempts to embezzle funds. However, Nimisha's family opposed the claim.

As per The New Indian Express report, in 2015, Mahdi accompanied Nimisha Priya to Kerala when she came for a month-long holiday, when he stole a wedding photograph of Nimisha, which he later manipulated to claim that he was married to her.

In a bid to reclaim her passport confiscated by the Yemeni national, she allegedly injected him with sedatives. However, an overdose of the sedative resulted in his death.

Back in 2018, she was apprehended while attempting to flee Yemen and was convicted in 2018. She was sentenced to death by a trial court in Sana’a in 2020. Yemen’s Supreme Judicial Council had dismissed her appeal in November 2023 while keeping the option of paying blood money open.

Kerala CM Writes To PM Modi

Urging his intervention, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Considering the fact that this is a case deserving sympathy, I appeal to the Hon'ble Prime Minister to take up the matter and intervene with the authorities concerned to save the life of Smt. Nimisha Priya," the Chief Minister said in the letter.

Seeking similar intervention, Congress leader KC Venugopal said, "The death sentence against Nimisha Priya is a grave travesty of justice. She is a victim of unimaginable cruelty and domestic abuse on foreign soil, driven to the brink. She doesn’t deserve to die. I’ve written to the PM seeking urgent intervention to prevent her execution."

About Nimisha Priya: What All Do We Know?

Nimisha Priya, a trained nurse from Kollengode in Palakkad district, left for Yemen in 2008 to help her daily wage labourer parents, says a Business Standard report.

Nimisha's husband and minor daughter returned to India in 2014 owing to financial reasons. In the same year, Yemen was gripped by civil war, and they were prohibited from going back as the country stopped issuing new visas.

Later in 2015, Nimisha got in touch with Mahdi to set up her clinic in as under Yemen's law, only nationals are allowed to set up clinics and business firms.

Before planning to start her own clinic, she worked in a few hospitals in the country. In 2017, she had a fallout with her local partner Talal Abdo Mahdi as he claimed alleged attempts to embezzle funds. However, Nimisha's family opposed the claim.

As per The New Indian Express report, in 2015, Mahdi accompanied Nimisha Priya to Kerala when she came for a month-long holiday when he stole a wedding photograph of Nimisha, which he later manipulated to claim that he was married to her.

In a bid to reclaim her passport confiscated by the Yemeni national, she allegedly injected him with sedatives. However, an overdose of the sedative resulted in his death.

Back in 2018, she was apprehended while attempting to flee Yemen and was convicted in 2018. She was sentenced to death by a trial court in Sana’a in 2020. Yemen’s Supreme Judicial Council had dismissed her appeal in November 2023 while keeping the option of paying blood money open.

Priya's mother travels to Yemen

Priya's mother moved the high court last year, seeking permission to travel to Yemen in spite of a travel ban for Indian nationals and negotiate the "blood money" to save her daughter.

Delhi High Court permitted the mother of the accused woman to travel to the West Asian country to negotiate about blood money with the victim’s family and save her daughter from the gallows.

Justice Subramonium Prasad directed the Centre to relax its 2017 notification, which barred Indian passport holders from travelling to Yemen, for the petitioner subject to her filing an affidavit that she will travel with another person to the restive nation for negotiating her daughter's release at her own risk and responsibility without any liability to the Government of India or the state government concerned.