Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Dec 31: The Government of India is extending all possible help to the family of the Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya who is on death row at the Central prison in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, the Ministry for External Affairs said on Tuesday.
“We are aware of the sentencing of Ms Nimisha Priya in Yemen. We understand that the family of Ms Priya is exploring relevant options. The government is extending all possible help in the matter,” MEA spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said.
The MEA made the statement soon after the President of Yemen approved Ms Priya’s death sentence, Yemen President Rashad al-Alimi has signed off on the death sentence of Ms Priya, who has been serving a prison sentence since 2017 for the murder of a Yemeni national, her business partner. The sentence will be executed in a month’s time, according to media reports.
The Yemeni President’s decision came as a shock to Nimisha Priya’s family in Kerala, which has been making efforts to save the 36-year-old from death row. Her mother Prema Kumari, 57, reached Sanaa earlier this year and has since been reportedly staying there to secure a waiver of the death penalty and negotiate the blood money with the family of the man she killed.
A native of Palakkad in Kerala, Nimisha was imprisoned and found guilty of killing Talal Abdo Mahdi, a Yemeni national in July 2017 by the trial court. A year later, she was sentenced to death by a trial court in Yemen. Since then, her family has been fighting for her release. They approached the Yemini Supreme Court against the trial court’s order, but their appeal was rejected in 2023. Now, with the country’s President also rejecting Priya’s appeal, her release depends on securing the forgiveness of the victim’s family and their tribal leaders.
Nimisha had left for Yemen in 2008 to help her parents, who were daily-wage labourers. She worked in a few hospitals in Yemen before deciding to start her own clinic in 2015. The family said differences cropped up with Mahdi, her local partner, after she questioned him about the alleged embezzlement of funds. She allegedly injected him with sedatives in an attempt to reclaim her passport that he had confiscated and an overdose resulted in his death.
As per her appeal plea, Ms Priya, a trained nurse, had worked in private hospitals in Yemen for a few years. Her husband and minor daughter returned to India in 2014 because of financial reasons. The same year, Yemen was gripped by civil war, and they could not go back, as the country stopped issuing new visas. Later in 2015, Priya sought Mahdi’s support to set up her clinic in Sana’a, as under Yemen’s law, only citizens are allowed to set up clinics and business firms.
Mahdi accompanied Priya to Kerala in 2015 when she came for a month-long holiday. During the visit, he stole her wedding photograph, which he later manipulated to claim that he was married to her. Upon their return, when Priya started the clinic, Mahdi started cornering all the revenue. He also manipulated the ownership documents of the clinic. When Nimisha Priya questioned him about the embezzlement, he turned hostile towards her.
He also began to take money out of her monthly earnings after telling everyone that Priya was his wife and even morphed their pictures to show they were married. In her plea, Priya alleged that soon the harassment turned into physical torture and Mahdi also seized her passport. According to her plea, Priya even approached the police in Sanaa, but instead of taking action against Mahdi, the police arrested her and put her in jail for six days.
Prema Kumari has been trying to negotiate blood money with the victim’s family, but talks came to an abrupt halt in September after Abdullah Ameer, the lawyer appointed by the Indian Embassy, demanded a pre-negotiation fee of $20,000 (approximately Rs16.6 lakh), according to media reports.
The Indian foreign ministry had already provided $19,871 to Ameer in July, but he insisted on a total fee of $40,000, payable in two instalments, before he would resume talks. The Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council succeeded in raising the first instalment of Ameer’s fee through crowdfunding. However, later they reportedly faced challenges in ensuring transparency to donors about how the funds were being used.
The family members and well-wishers of Nimisha Priya remain hopeful of her release despite reports that Rashad al-Alimi, President of Yemen, has given the nod for her execution. Samuel Jerome Bhaskaran, a member of the “Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council” who has been working in Yemen for over 24 years and co-ordinating the efforts to release her, said from Yemen on Monday that the death penalty can be waived, if the victim’s family agreed to pardon her in exchange for blood money.
“The negotiations came to a halt following the release in the delay of the second instalment of the fee asked by the lawyer engaged on behalf of Ms Nimisha Priya to carry out the talks with the family members and tribal leaders,” he said.
According to the council, the lawyer had demanded a total of about 40,000 dollars as pre-negotiation fee. About 20,000 dollars were transferred to him through the Indian Embassy in Yemen in July 2024. However, he had made it clear that the negotiations could continue only after receiving the remaining amount.
Subhash Chandran K. R., member of the council and Supreme Court lawyer who had represented 57-year-old Prema Kumari, mother of Nimisha Priya in the Delhi High Court, said the release of the second instalment was put on hold as the council had asked the lawyer to update on the progress of the negotiations and the details about how the initial funding was utilised.
Ms Kumari had met her daughter at the prison in Sanaa on April 24, 2024 after a long journey from Kochi. She was accompanied by Mr Bhaskaran. She continues to remain in Yemen. She was able to travel to Yemen after the Delhi High Court on a plea filed by her and the Council asked the Centre to relax its 2017 notification, which barred Indian passport holders from travelling to Yemen.
She visited her in jail along with Samuel Jerome Bhaskaran, accompanied by two officials of the Indian mission in Yemen. In a WhatsApp message shared with the council, Mr Samuel termed their reunion as an ‘emotional’ moment. “They were allowed to stay together for some time as we went out and brought lunch for both of them,” he said.
