New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday postponed for eight weeks the hearing on a plea seeking the Union government’s intervention to save Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya from execution in Yemen.
A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta adjourned the matter after being informed that negotiations with the victim’s family were under way. The court granted liberty to the petitioner, the ‘Save Nimisha Priya Action Council’, to mention the case in the event of any urgency.
Priya’s execution, earlier scheduled for 16 July, has been temporarily halted. She was sentenced to death in Yemen for the 2017 murder of Yemeni national Talal Abdo Mehdi and remains in prison there.
At an earlier hearing, the Bench had directed the Centre to decide on a representation seeking permission to travel to Yemen to negotiate a pardon with the victim’s family. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had refused the request, citing severe security risks in the war-torn country.
Under Yemen’s Islamic legal system, a death sentence may be commuted if the convict’s family pays ‘diya’ (blood money) to the victim’s relatives.
Originally from Kollengode in Kerala’s Palakkad district, Priya moved to Yemen in 2008 and worked in several hospitals before opening her own clinic. In 2017, a dispute arose with her Yemeni business partner, Mahdi, over alleged misappropriation of funds.
According to her family, she injected Mahdi with sedatives to recover her confiscated passport, but an overdose caused his death. She was arrested while attempting to flee Yemen, convicted in 2018, and sentenced to death in 2020. The verdict was upheld by Yemen’s Supreme Judicial Council in November 2023, though it left open the option of paying blood money.
Priya’s mother, Prema Kumari, 57, has been campaigning to secure a waiver of the death penalty, including travelling to Sanaa to negotiate with the victim’s family. Her efforts are supported by the ‘Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council’, a group of NRI social workers based in Yemen.