Yemen’s president Rashad al-Alimi on Monday, December 30 approved the death sentence given to 36-year-old Nimisha Priya, a nurse from Kerala. Nimisha has been accused of murdering a Yemeni national and has been in jail for many years.
All efforts by Nimisha’s family to reduce her sentence have been in vain. After the President’s approval, Nimisha may be executed within a month. Nimisha’s mother Prema Kumari has been staying in Yemen and working with the help of other Indian origin people to save her from the death penalty. The family’s efforts to pay the blood money to the victim’s family as per Yemeni Islamic law have also failed.
Back in Kerala, Nenmara MLA K Babu has stated that they had managed to collect around 40,000 dollars to help Nimisha. But back in Sanaa, the family’s negotiations with the victim’s side reached a dead-end in September.
Nimisha is from Kollengode in Palakkad district. Her parents are daily labourers. She had gone to Yemen in 2008. She had planned to open a clinic with a local business partner. She had had a fallout with her business partner Talal Abdo Mahdi. In an attempt to secure her passport and other documents that were taken away by the Yemeni national in 2017, she had injected him with sedatives. However, the overdose caused Mahdi’s death. Nimisha was arrested while trying to flee Yemen. She was convicted in 2018. A trial court in Sanaa had sentenced her to death in 2020.
