Amid mounting tension over Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya's execution in Yemen due to the alleged murder of Talal Abdo Mahdi, the family of the deceased Yemeni resident reportedly said that they would settle for nothing less than implementing 'God's Law in Qisas'.
Rooted in the concept of 'an eye for an eye, under Yemen’s legal system, the victim’s family is allowed to seek retributive justice, usually the death penalty for the accused in cases of murder.
Since 2017, Priya has been imprisoned in Sana'a Central Prison for the alleged murder of Mahdi, after she reportedly injected him with sedatives in an attempt to retrieve her passport from his possession.
Her death sentence was set to be carried out today, July 16. However, it was postponed a day before. The Yemeni administration reportedly issued an order dated and said that Priya’s execution was deferred until a new date is announced.
What Did The Yemeni Family Say?
Before the execution was postponed, in an interview with the BBC, Mahdi's family asserted that they would settle for nothing less than her being put to death.
"Our stance on the attempts at reconciliation is clear; we insist on implementing God's Law in Qisas [retaliation in kind], nothing else," his brother, Abdelfattah Mahdi, had told BBC Arabic on Monday.
Abdelfattah Mahdi had said his family had suffered "not only from the brutal crime but also the long, exhausting litigation process in a horrible and heinous but obvious crime case".
As per NDTV, Abdelfattah also expressed firmly the family's deep displeasure in the manner in which the Indian media has been "distorting things to portray the convicted as a victim".
'Nothing Much Govt Can Do': Centre Tells SC
With the execution 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.
Owing to diplomatic hurdles in the Houthi-controlled Sana, government agencies and organisations working for her release have been unable to make any breakthrough.
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."
About Nimisha 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.
