Yemeni President Rashad al-Alimi has sanctioned the death sentence for the Indian nurse, who has been in jail since 2017 on murder charges.
Nimisha Priya, a nurse from Kerala, has been sentenced to death in Yemen in a high-profile case related to the murder of a Yemeni national, Talal Abdo Mahdi.
Yemeni President Rashad al-Alimi has sanctioned the death sentence for the Indian nurse, who has been in jail since 2017 on murder charges. The case has garnered significant attention in India, with the Centre stepping in to ensure she receives all possible assistance.
According to Yemeni media reports, the death sentence was approved by President Rashad al-Alimi this week, and the execution is scheduled to take place in a month. She was convicted of killing Mahdi in July 2017.
Who Is Nimisha Priya?
Priya, who hails from Kerala’s Palakkad district, moved to Yemen in 2008 after completing her nursing training program. According to reports, she moved to support her daily wage labourer parents.
Initially, she worked day and night in several hospitals in Yemen before deciding own clinic.
She came in contact with Talal Abdo Mahdi in 2014 when he promised to assist her in launching her clinic in Yemen, a wish she had for long.
According to Yemeni business law, a foreigner must partner with a local to launch a business in a Middle Eastern country. By the law, they partnered and agreed on terms to open the clinic.
Crime And Backstory
She went on to start her clinic in 2015 with Mahdi, but soon differences cropped up between them. She had accused Mahdi of abuse and torture. He reportedly even took her passport to ensure she did not leave Yemen.
She registered a police complaint against Mahdi, which led to his arrest in 2016. However, according to local media reports, he was set free sometime later.
The dispute turned tragic when the duo engaged in a dispute in 2017. Desperate to recover her passport and move back to India, she sought the help of a local jail warden, who suggested using sedatives to incapacitate Mahdi.
Acting on the suggestion, she injected him with sedatives in an attempt to retrieve her passport from his possession. However, he died of an overdose, leading to her arrest and conviction in the case.
Nimisha’s 57-year-old mother, Prema Kumari, had reached Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, earlier this year and has been staying there to secure a waiver of the death penalty and negotiate the blood money with the victim’s family.
Her mother, Prema Kumari, had even approached the Yemini Supreme Court against the death sentence, but the appeal was rejected in 2023.
In 2018, a Yemeni trial court sentenced Priya to death, a verdict later upheld by the Yemeni Supreme Court in 2023. Recently, President Rashad al-Alimi’s approval of the death sentence has intensified the urgency of the situation.
