Family Of Kerala Nurse Facing Death Penalty In Yemen Moves Delhi HC: Here¡¯s What The Case Is

After a Yemen court dismissed Indian national Nimishi Priya's appeal against her death sentence on Monday, on Saturday a petition has been filed in the Delhi High Court seeking to direct diplomatic interventions and negotiations on her behalf.

The plea filed by the Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council states that Nimisha was held guilty of murder and awarded death sentence after she allegedly gave sedatives to a man who hid her passport and kept her as a slave in Yemen.

Nimisha, a nurse from Kerala, had been working in Yemen when travel to and from the country was banned in 2016 due to the Civil War. Her husband and daughter returned to India in 2014, but she couldn't due to her job.

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Later, she was accused of killing the Yemeni national in July 2017.

Priya, a trained nurse by profession, is found guilty of murdering Mahdi by chopping his body into pieces and disposing off the corpse in a water tank. The duo acquainted each other after she was keen to start her own medical clinic in Sanaa. She had sought Mahdi's aid, as under Gulf regulations, only nationals can set up businesses and foreign nationals/entities are required to attain sponsorships from locals.

The petition is filed by 'Save Nimisha Priya- International Action Council', in her assistance, after an appeal court in Sanaa, on March 7, dismissed the appeal by the Indian citizen who is sentenced to death.

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The aforementioned Council has been formed since September 2020 in association with a group of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) mostly Keralites, based in different countries or parts of India. The group's objective is to bring justice to Nimisha Priya and also raise funds in a bid to pay blood money if the kins of the victim decided to pardon her.

Priya, who is accused of the murder of Talal Abdo Mahdi, a Yemeni national. The murder is said to have taken place in July 2017 after Mahdi allegedly injected Priya with sedatives to seize her passport and restrain her movement. Reports suggest that Priya has repeatedly accused the Yemeni national of torturing and harassing, thus inflicting abuse on her.

The petitioner's advocate Subash Chandran KR told the Delhi HC that the Yemeni court tried Priya in 2020, subsequently, Priya had filed an appeal against her sentence, however, the judge upheld her death penalty, diminishing the scope for a further chance of appeal at the Supreme Court.

"Though another chance of appeal to the Supreme Court still exists, Nimisha Priya is unlikely to be spared the punishment awarded by the lower court for the 2017 murder. The apex court rarely sets aside the verdict of the appeal court as it will only examine if any procedural errors affected the outcome of the case, not its merits. She can hope to come out of the death row even now only if the victim's family accepts blood money and she managed to get relief from legal procedures," ANI quoted the petitioner as saying.

Also, it was brought to the fore that the petitioner has mentioned that even after the appeal, the negotiation has not begun with the victim's family. Moreover, 'neither Nimisha's family members nor the members of the Petitioner organisation are able to travel to Yemen for negotiations at present as the respondents have declared a travel ban for Indians to Yemen since 2016," the plea stated.