New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Tuesday (December 5) asked the Union to respond to a plea by the mother of a 34-year-old nurse from Kerala facing death sentence in Yemen for murdering a Yemeni national.

Nimisha Priya was convicted for murdering Talal Abdo Mahdi, who died in July 2017, after she allegedly injected him with sedatives to get back her passport from his possession.

On November 13, 2023, the top court in Yemen rejected Priya’s appeal and ordered her execution. However, as Yemen follows Sharia law, she is eligible to secure a pardon from the victim's family by paying diyah or "blood money".

Priya’s mother had moved the high court earlier this year earlier to seek permission to travel to Priya as Yemen has placed a travel ban on Indian nationals.

Advocate Subhash Chandran K.R., who is representing Priya’s mother in the matter, said that the petitioner wasn’t asking the government to pay the blood money and was only seeking permission to travel to Yemen.

The Delhi high court last week rejected a petition filed by a lobby group called Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council on the grounds that India doesn’t have a diplomatic presence in Yemen.

“We advised that please don’t go there because it will not be possible for us to provide any service. There is no single Indian there to help you or to provide security to you. We don’t want people to go there or to be exposed to hostile position. There is no consular officer there or even connection with the current government in Yemen,” the Union’s counsel said in court.

The government's assessment is based on the political condition in Yemen which has been caught in a civil war between the country’s official government and Houthi rebels since 2014. Since India doesn’t recognise Houthis, a trip to Yemen is unsafe for Indian nationals. The Union also clarified in court that there are no direct flights operating between the two countries.

The lobby group had approached the high court last year and sought direction to the Union to 'facilitate diplomatic interventions as well as negotiations with the family of the victim on behalf of Nimisha Priya to save her life by paying blood money in accordance with the law of the land in a time-bound manner', the Deccan Herald reported.

The petition said that Mahdi had forged documents to show that Priya was his wife to abuse and torture her. It also accuses Mahdi of taking away Priya’s passport and all of the revenue from the clinic that the two ran in partnership.When Priya approached Yemeni police, they allegedly locked her up for six days instead of taking action against Mahdi.

Deepa Joseph, lawyer and social activist and vice-chair of the Save Nimisha council told the BBC that the Indian government's support is key to saving Nimisha. "The only option is to seek forgiveness from Mahdi's family and negotiate blood money with them."

The high court had earlier refused to direct the Union to negotiate payment of blood money to save Priya's life but asked it to pursue legal remedies against her conviction, the Deccan Herald report said.

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