Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Tuesday assured that the government is extending all possible help in the Nimisha Priya matter. MEA in its press release said, “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.” According to reports, the execution is scheduled to take place within a month.
Our response to media queries regarding the case of Ms. Nimisha Priya:https://t.co/DlviLboqKG pic.twitter.com/tSgBlmitCy
---Advertisement---— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) December 31, 2024
Who Is Nimisha Priya?
Nimisha Priya, a native of Kerala has been in jail since 2017 in Yemen. She has been sentenced to death for the murder of a Yemeni national, Talal Abdo Mahdi. She is a trained nurse and has worked in private hospitals in Yemen for a few years. Nimisha moved to Yemen in 2008 to support her daily-wage labourer parents.
Her husband and minor daughter returned to India in 2014 because of financial reasons. After working several years in Yemen, she decided to set up her own clinic. In 2014, she came in contact with Yemeni national, Talal Abdo Mahdi who promised to help her in setting the clinic in Sana.
A Look At Her Case
She sought Mahdi’s support because, under Yemen’s law, only nationals are allowed to set up clinics and business firms. The plea mentioned that in 2015, Mahdi accompanied Nimisha Priya to Kerala when she came on a month-long holiday. During the visit, he stole a wedding photograph of Nimisha, which he later manipulated to claim that he was married to her.
However, the partnership between the two deteriorated after some time. In 2015, she started her own clinic without Mahdi’s help. After she started the clinic, Mahdi started cornering all the revenue. He became hostile when Nimisha questioned him about the embezzlement.
After a while, Nimisha’s clinic began, and Mahdi manipulated the ownership documents of the clinic. He also began to take money out of her monthly earnings after telling everyone that Nimisha was his wife and even morphed their pictures to show they were married, the plea said.
Nimisha alleged that Mahdi had been harassing her and her family for years, taking money from them and even making claims to her husband.
The plea alleged that the harassment then became physical torture. Mahdi even seized her passport to ensure that she would not leave Yemen. He tortured her under the influence of drugs. He threatened her at gunpoint several times. He took all the money from the clinic and her ornaments.
Nimisha complained to the police in Sana. But instead of taking action against Mahdi, the police arrested her and put her in jail for six days.
In July 2017, she took the help of a warden of a jail located near her clinic, where Mahdi had been jailed previously under various charges. The warden suggested that she should try to sedate him, and then convince him to give her passport. However, sedation did not affect Mahdi, who was a substance abuser. She tried sedating him again, using a stronger sedative in order to retrieve her passport but he died within a few minutes due to a drug overdose.
In 2018, she was sentenced to death by a Yemeni court. Her appeal to the Yemeni Supreme Court in 2023 was rejected.
The only way for her to escape from the death penalty is to gain pardon from the family of the deceased by paying blood money to the family in accordance with the law of the land (Shariah Law), the plea said. Since then, her family has been trying to negotiate the payment of diya (blood money) to the victim’s family.
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