New Delhi: The Supreme Court is slated to hear on Monday a plea seeking directions to the Centre to use diplomatic channels to save Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya from execution.
Indian national Nimisha Priya, who has been sentenced to death in Yemen for the murder of a Yemeni national, Talal Abdo Mehd and has been in prison for the last three years, is tentatively set to be executed on July 16.
As per the causelist published on the website of the apex court, a Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta will take up the plea filed by “Save Nimisha Priya Action Council” for hearing on July 14.
The plea, referring to Sharia law, stated that the death penalty could be negotiated with the payment of ‘diya (blood money)’ to the victim’s family.
On Thursday, a ‘Partial Court Working Days Bench’ of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi directed listing of the matter on July 14 after it was mentioned for urgent hearing by senior advocate Ragenth Basant.
The Justice Dhulia-led Bench directed that a copy of the petition be served to the Attorney General of India, the highest law officer of the Centre.
Considering the nature and urgency of the matter, the top court asked the Union government to inform it about the steps taken in the case on the date fixed.
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 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)
