Nimisha Priya's appeal against the death penalty rejected by Yemen Court

Thiruvananthapuram: The Supreme Court of Yemen has rejected Kerla nurse Nimisha Priya's appeal against the death sentence.

Nimisha Priya, a Malayali nurse, was sentenced to death in Yemen over murder charges in 2017. She was convicted of murdering Yemeni national Talal Abdo Mahdi.

The Centre had on Thursday informed the Delhi High Court about Yemen's Supreme Court's verdict rejecting Nimnisha Priya's appeal.

 
The petition filed by Nimisha's mother Prema Mary seeking the government's help to let her visit Yemen was directed to be submitted to the Centre in the form of an application. The Delhi High Court also gave seven days to the Centre to decide on the matter. During the proceedings, the Centre informed the court regarding the rejection of the nurse's appeal by the Yemen court.

The Delhi High Court further directed Nimisha's mother to hand over the documents including the passport.

Nimisha's mother said the Yemen court's verdict was unexpected and she hoped to go to Yemen with the assistance of the central government to meet her daughter who is awaiting the death penalty in jail.

 The nurse’s mother said despite several petitions to the central government to allow her to travel to Yemen, there has been no intervention from the authorities concerned. Earlier the Delhi HC sent a notice to the Centre on the petition filed by Nimisha's mother seeking government assistance to travel to Yemen.

It may be recalled that the Supreme Court of Yemen had expedited the proceedings against Nimisha on April 11. The proceedings were expedited on the petition filed by the family of the victim seeking immediate execution of the death penalty.

Nimisha's mother is hoping to have discussions with Mahdi's family to get her daughter released from jail. The nurse's mother and members of the Save Nimisha Priya Forum, a group constituted in support of Nimisha, had earlier planned to fly to Yemen to mediate with the victim's family. However, they have not received clearance from the Centre yet.

 

Background of the case

Nimisha, a native of Palakkad district of Kerala, was working in Yemen and she got stuck there following a travel ban in the country due to civil war in 2016. While her husband and daughter returned to India earlier in 2014, she could not join them at that time due to her job requirements. In the meantime, with the assistance of Yemeni citizen Talal Mahdi, Nimisha set up a clinic in 2015.

Subsequently, serious differences surfaced between Nimisha and Mahdi and the nurse accused him of torturing and abusing her. With the Yemeni national taking away her passport, she got stranded in that country with no documents to travel back home.

In her statement made earlier, Nimisha had alleged that the Yemeni had posed himself as her husband before the local authorities following which she could not get any assistance from them.

Things took a turn for the worse on July 25, 2017, when she injected Mahdi with sedatives to take her passport back and flee from that place. But to her horror, the Yemeni collapsed soon after she administered the sedative.

After realising that Mahdi had died, Nimisha along with another person's help disposed of his body.

The crime surfaced four days later. The Yemeni police took both Nimisha and her accomplice into custody.

While Nimisha was sentenced to death, the other person was given life imprisonment.