SC adjourns hearing on plea to save Kerala nurse amid ongoing negotiations

New Delhi, Aug 14 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Thursday adjourned for eight weeks the hearing on a plea seeking the Union government’s intervention to rescue Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya from execution in Yemen.

A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta deferred the hearing on a writ petition filed by 'Save Nimisha Priya Action Council' after being informed that negotiations with the victim’s family were currently underway, and granted liberty to mention the matter in case of any urgency.

It may be recalled that the execution of Indian national Nimisha Priya, initially scheduled for July 16, has been temporarily halted. She was sentenced to death in Yemen for murdering Yemeni national Talal Abdo Mehdi and remains behind bars there.

In the previous hearing, the Justice Vikram Nath-led Bench had asked the Centre to decide on a representation seeking permission to travel to Yemen to negotiate a pardon for the Indian citizen from the family of the victim.

The Union Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had earlier rejected the petitioner’s request to grant travel clearance to the war-torn country, citing severe security risks in Yemen.

Under Yemen’s Islamic legal framework, a death sentence can be negotiated with the payment of ‘diya (blood money)' to the victim's family.

Nimisha Priya, a nurse from Kollengode in Kerala's Palakkad district, had moved to Yemen in 2008 to support her daily-wage labourer parents.

She worked in several hospitals and eventually decided to open her own clinic. In 2017, a dispute arose between her and her Yemeni business partner, Talal Abdo Mahdi, after she reportedly opposed his alleged attempts to misappropriate funds.

According to her family, Nimisha allegedly injected Mahdi with sedatives to retrieve her confiscated passport. Tragically, an overdose led to his death. She was arrested while attempting to flee the country and was convicted of murder in 2018.

In 2020, a trial court in Sanaa sentenced her to death, and Yemen's Supreme Judicial Council upheld the verdict in November 2023, though it left open the option of blood money.

The mother of Nimishra Priya, Prema Kumari (57), has been tirelessly campaigning to secure a waiver of the death penalty. She has also travelled to Sanaa to negotiate the payment of blood money to the victim's family. Her efforts have been supported by the ‘Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council’, a group of NRI social workers based in Yemen.

--IANS

pds/dpb