New Delhi reportedly denied that the execution of an Indian nurse for murdering her Yemeni business partner had been cancelled, contradicting a leading Muslim cleric involved in negotiations to spare her life.
Nimisha Priya, 38, from the southern Indian state of Kerala, was sentenced to death in 2020 for murdering Talal Abdo Mehdi, the Yemeni co-owner of her clinic in Sanaa.
Her execution on 16 July was suspended to allow for negotiations led by Indian Muslim cleric Kanthapuram AP Aboobakr Musliyar.
The cleric’s office claimed on Monday Priya’s execution had been revoked after a team of Yemeni scholars and diplomats mediated with the Houthi administration.
“The death sentence of Nimisha Priya, which was previously suspended, has been overturned,” the office announced in a statement. “A high-level meeting held in Sanaa decided to completely cancel the death sentence.”
But foreign ministry sources told ANI news agency that “information being shared by certain individuals on the Nimisha Priya case is inaccurate”.
The Indian government told the Supreme Court earlier this month there was “nothing much” it could do to prevent Priya’s execution given the lack of formal diplomatic ties with Yemen.
Priya has been held in a Sanaa prison since her arrest in 2017.
The nurse was convicted of injecting Mehdi with sedatives in an attempt to retrieve her passport, which he had allegedly confiscated. The dose proved fatal.
Her sentence was upheld by the Supreme Judicial Council in 2023.
Yemeni law punishes murder by death, as it does drug trafficking, apostasy, adultery, and same-sex relations. The country, however, allows a murder convict to be pardoned by the victim’s kin in exchange for diyat, or “blood money”.
Priya moved to Yemen in 2008 and eventually launched a clinic in partnership with Mehdi, in keeping with Yemeni law requiring foreign entrepreneurs to collaborate with citizens.
Her family previously alleged that Priya faced mental, physical and financial abuse at his hands. She had even filed a police complaint against him in 2016, leading to his brief arrest. He allegedly resumed threatening her after getting out.
The nurse’s mother, Prema Kumari, a domestic worker in Kochi city, has been in Yemen for the past year trying to save her daughter.
In December, she moved the Delhi High Court for exemption from an Indian travel advisory barring its citizens visiting the conflict-ridden Yemen. She has visited her daughter several times in prison.
In an emotional appeal earlier this year, Ms Kumari said she was “deeply grateful to the Indian and Kerala governments, as well as the committee formed to save her, for all the support provided so far”.
“But this is my final plea,” she added, “please help us save her life. Time is running out.”
