Day before her execution, a ray of hope for Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya in Yemen

The Print

6 days ago

'It's good news that they have stayed the order. And it gives us some breathing time to initiate negotiations,' Advocate Subhash Chandran K.R, a member of the Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council, told ThePrint.
This comes a day after Kanthapuram A. P. Aboobacker Musliyar, the general secretary of the All India Sunni Jamiyyathul Ulama and chancellor of Jamia Markaz, initiated a new mediation effort through his long-time friend and Yemeni Sufi Islamic scholar Sheikh Habib Umar bin Hafiz.
Thiruvananthapuram: The execution of Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya, who is on death row in Yemen since 2020, was postponed Tuesday, a day before the scheduled date.
Subhash said the amount of blood money—monetary compensation offered to the family of a murdered person—and further proceedings will be decided in the upcoming days.
Hailing from Kerala's Palakkad district, Priya was convicted of murdering Yemeni national Talal Abdo Mahdi in 2017. He was her partner in setting up a clinic in the Yemeni capital city of Sana'a in 2015.
Mahdi began embezzling money and torturing Priya soon after the clinic was set up, according to the Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council. He also seized her passport and other documents. The nurse then attempted to sedate him in order to retrieve the documents, and he died of an overdose in the process, it has been alleged.
The council was formed in September 2020 by a group of non-resident Keralites in different parts of India and abroad with the objective to ensure 'access of justice' to Priya and to raise funds through donations for paying blood money.
Sana'a, where she is imprisoned, is under Houthi control, complicating the matter. The central government informed the Supreme Court Monday it cannot do anything further in the matter.
'There is nothing much the government can do. Looking at the sensitivity of Yemen, it's not diplomatically recognised. Blood money is a private negotiation,' Attorney General R. Venkataramani, representing the Centre, told the court.
Reacting to the news of the execution being postponed, Thiruvananthapuram MP and former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor said interventions have been taking place since 2020.
'Although India has an embassy in Yemen, due to the political and security situation in the country, the Indian embassy in Sana'a has been functioning temporarily from a camp office in Djibouti since April 2015. Because of this, our diplomatic efforts have so far not been successful,' he wrote on social media Tuesday.
He also lauded Kanthapuram A. P. Aboobacker Musliyar's efforts. 'At a time like today, when efforts are being made to divide people in the name of religion and community and to spread hatred and animosity, the respected Kanthapuram Ustad is showing us that humanity is of the utmost importance,' Tharoor wrote.
Also Read: Appeal rejected, Indian nurse on death row in Yemen has 2 options: President's pardon or 'blood money'
The case and the family
A trained nurse, Priya moved to Yemen in 2008 with her husband to work at a private hospital in Sana'a. After working for a few years, her husband and minor daughter returned to India in 2014 due to financial issues. They were unable to go back because of the civil war in Yemen and visa restrictions.
At present, her husband works as an auto-rickshaw driver, and her 12-year-old daughter lives in a convent in their native place.
In 2015, Priya joined hands with Mahdi to set up her own clinic in Sana'a, since Yemeni law mandates no clinic or businesses can be opened without a local partner.
A petition filed by the council earlier this month in the Supreme Court, seeking the Centre's intervention to facilitate diplomatic negotiations with the victim's family, states that Mahdi accompanied Priya to Kerala in 2015 when she came on a month-long holiday.
At that time, he stole a wedding photograph of Priya, which he later manipulated to claim he was married to her. The petition also alleges that Mahdi started cornering all the revenue after the clinic was set up.
'He became hostile when Nimisha questioned him about the embezzlement. He later threatened her, forged documents to claim that she was married to him as per his religion, and brutally tortured her,' the petition states.
It further alleges that Mahdi manipulated ownership documents and took money from her monthly earnings, claiming she was his wife. Later, Mahdi seized her passport, physically tortured and threatened her at gunpoint on multiple occasions under the influence of drugs, the document states.
The petition also states that Priya was put in jail for six days when she tried to complain against him.
In July 2017, following advice from a warden of a jail near her clinic, where Mahdi had previously been imprisoned, Priya planned to sedate him to retrieve her documents. 'However, sedation did not affect Mr. Mahdi, who was a substance abuser. She tried sedating him again, using a stronger sedative to retrieve her passport, but he died within a few minutes due to a drug overdose,' it says.
After her sentencing by a trial court in 2020, she filed appeals against the death penalty, which were dismissed both by the first appellate court and by the Supreme Judicial Council of Yemen.
'What we understood is that there was huge pressure from tribal groups on the family not to give her a pardon. That is why they weren't coming forward. Yesterday, Kanthapuram Musliyar's involvement made it easier to talk to the cleric,' the petition said.
It added Priya was forced to sign confessional documents at the beginning, which complicated the case. 'She didn't know it was a confession. She didn't have anyone to help her, no lawyer to defend her. The political situation was also such that there was an ongoing civil war. She was forced to sign those.'
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
Also Read: Will do whatever we can, says Iranian official on Nimisha Priya, nurse facing death sentence in Yemen