Nimisha Priya, an Indian woman on death row in Yemen, has been assured full support from the Indian government after Yemen’s President Rashad al-Alimi confirmed that they have ratified the death penalty on her. Priya, aged 36 and from Palakkad, Kerala, was caught in July 2017 and executed by a Yemeni court in 2020 for her part in the murder of a Yemeni man called Talal Abdo Mehdi. Though moves were made to seek her release through the Islamic law of diyat, an equivalent of blood money, the process ground to a halt and the president signed the death penalty on Monday.
Instead, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal clarified for the public that the Indian government is playing an active role in helping Priya and her family find a legal way of freeing her from prison. “We know the case of Ms. Nimisha Priya, who has been sentenced in Yemen. Regarding her family, we know they are looking into some possibilities related to it,” Jaiswal said. On that, he said: “The government is going out of its way in providing all the assistance it can in this regard”, but did not divulge any other information regarding the issue.
Currently, Priya is detained in the main prison in Sana’a, the capital city of Yemen. Her mother, Prema Kumari, visited Yemen earlier this year in order to persuade the victim’s family to accept blood money rather than the death penalty. To some extent, she was assisted by an expatriate Indian community organization in Yemen.
Priya, who arrived in Yemen in 2009 to work as a nurse, set up the clinic in Sana’a in 2015 with her Yemeni partner, Talal Abdo Mehdi. The two had a conflict of interest in 2017 bordering on embezzlement; Priya was arrested alongside another Yemeni man over the murder. However, in November 2023, her appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Judicial Council, so Priya’s family managed to collect more than 19,800 USD out of the 40,000 USD needed to pay the blood money.
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