Yemen signs off on death sentence for India nurse Nimisha Priya

Dubai: Yemen’s President Rashad Al Alimi has approved the death sentence for Indian nurse Nimisha Priya, who has been serving a prison sentence since 2017 for the murder of a Yemeni national. The sentence will be executed in a month’s time, according to media reports.

India said in a statement that it was aware of Nimisha Priya’s death sentence in Yemen and was extending all possible help to her family.

“We understand that the family of Priya is exploring relevant options. The government is extending all possible help in the matter,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in the statement.

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, Yemen’s capital, 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.

Nimisha Priya, from Palakkad in Kerala, is a trained nurse and has worked in private hospitals in Yemen for a few years.

Her husband and minor daughter returned to India in 2014 because of financial reasons and in that same year, Yemen was gripped by civil war, and they could not go back as the country stopped issuing new visas.

In 2015, Priya joined hands with Talal Abdo Mahdi, a Yemeni national, to set up her clinic in Sanaa. She sought Mahdi’s support because, under Yemen’s law, only nationals are allowed to set up clinics and business firms. In 2015, Mahdi accompanied Priya Priya to Kerala when she came for 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.

A plea moved by Nimisha Priya’s mother stated: “After a while, Priya’s clinic began, Mahdi manipulated the ownership documents of the clinic. He also began to take money out of her monthly earnings after telling everyone that Priya was his wife.

Priya alleged that Mahdi had been harassing her and her family for years. Mahdi also seized her passport. This was done 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.”

The plea further alleged that unable to cope with the torture, Priya complained to the police in Sanaa but instead of taking action against Mahdi, the police arrested her and put her in jail for six days. It was further alleged that on her return from jail, the severity of the torture increased manifold.

In July 2017, Priya took the help of a warden of a jail located near her clinic. 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.

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, according to a report by Manorama online.

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.