'Nothing much can be done': Centre tells SC on plea to halt Nimisha Priya's execution in Yemen

Nimisha Priya

The Centre on Monday  told the Supreme Court  that it was making “all possible efforts" to save Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya, who is scheduled to be executed in Yemen on July 16 for murder charges, but added that “nothing much can be done".

The government’s submission came during a hearing in the Supreme Court on a plea seeking direction to the Centre to use diplomatic channels to save her. “All possible efforts are being made, but nothing much can be done. Not much can be done as far as Yemen is concerned," Attorney-General R Venkataramani said in the court.

Advocate Subhash Chandran KR submitted the plea, which argues that the payment of blood money would influence the victim's family to pardon the Kerala nurse. Nimisha Priya's family has reportedly offered $1 million ( ₹8.6 crore) as 'blood money' to the victim's family in hopes of saving her.

Nimisha Priya is a 38-year-old nurse from Kerala's Palakkad district. She went to Yemen for work in 2011, but is currently locked up in a prison in the capital city Sana’a.  In 2017, Priya attempted to sedate Mahdi aiming to get hold of her passport so she could leave Yemen, but the dose turned lethal and he died. She also allegedly dismembered his body and dispose it. She was sentenced to death three years later in 2020, an order the Houthis' Supreme Judicial Council upheld in 2023.

"There's nothing much govt can do...looking at sensitivity of Yemen...it's not diplomatically recognized...blood money is a private negotiation...There's a point till which govt of India can go. We have reached that. Yemen is not like any other part of the world. We didn't want to complicate situation by going public, we are trying at private level..." Live Law said quoting Attorney-General R Venkataramani.