Kerala Nurse Nimisha Priya, who has been imprisoned in Yemen since 2017 for allegedly killing a Yemeni national, is given a death sentence within a month. India has stated that it is offering all assistance to Priya, whose death sentence was approved by Yemen President Rashad al-Alimi.
Concerned about the situation, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) stated that every possibility is being considered. “We are aware of Ms. Nimisha Priya’s Yemeni punishment. We are aware that Ms. Priya’s family is looking at pertinent options. The administration is offering all assistance it can in this regard,” MEA spokesman Randhir Jaiswal stated.
In 2017, Nimisha Priya, an Indian nurse with training, was convicted of the murder of Yemeni national Talal Abdo Mahdi. After trying to get her passport back, which he had confiscated, Priya, who had been employed in Yemen for a number of years, is said to have killed Mahdi. With the intention of momentarily incapacitating him and reclaiming the passport, she gave him a sedative injection; however, the dosage proved lethal, and he died from an overdose.
Priya was given a death sentence by a Yemeni court in 2018. Her appeal to the Yemeni Supreme Court in 2023 was denied, and now, with the president’s approval, her fate depends on whether she can get forgiveness from the victim’s family and tribal leaders.
Priya’s family, especially her mother Prema Kumari, has been fighting valiantly to save her life. Last year, Kumari traveled to Yemen and stayed in the capital Sana’a in an effort to negotiate the blood money with Mahdi’s family, a custom in Yemen that might have resulted in the sentence being commuted.
Negotiations for blood money hit a roadblock in September when Abdullah Ameer, the lawyer appointed by the Indian Embassy, demanded a $20,000 pre-negotiation fee. This fee later increased to $40,000, payable in two installments.
The Ministry of External Affairs had already paid Ameer $19,871 in July. However, disagreements over fees and transparency issues regarding crowdfunding further complicated the negotiations.
