Nimisha Priya death sentence: Doubts emerge over Kerala nurse getting relief; 'inaccurate,' say MEA sources

Sources in India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) have refuted reports that claimed the death sentence of Nimisha Priya, the Indian nurse facing murder charges in Yemen, has been overturned.

The sources on Tuesday (July 29) called these reports “inaccurate”.

The 37-year-old nurse from Kerala was initially scheduled to be executed on July 16 for killing her business partner in Yemen, but it was postponed.

Earlier on Monday, the office of the “Grand Mufti of India", Kanthapuram AP Abubakar Musliyar, released a statement that Nimisha’s death sentence had been overturned by Yemeni authorities.

The statement said that the decision was taken during a high-level conference in capital Sana’a when top Yemeni academics, nominated by Sheikh Umar Hafeel Thangal at the request of the Indian Grand Mufti, met with Northern Yemeni authorities and international diplomats.

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Nimisha Priya came to Yemen in 2008 to seek greater employment opportunities. Like many Indian nurses working overseas, her decision was motivated by financial concerns back home. She started working in a private hospital in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.

In 2015, she formed a business partnership with a Yemeni national named Mahdi to co-manage a medical facility. Since Yemeni laws prohibit foreign nationals from independently owning medical institutions, Mahdi’s involvement was essential for legal compliance.

However, Priya later claimed that the partnership had become abusive. According to her and her supporters, Mahdi kept her passport, misused clinic funds, physically attacked her, and restricted her freedom.

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Priya gave Mahdi sedatives in July 2017 in an attempt to reclaim her passport, and he later died. She and a coworker, in a state of panic, dissected the body and disposed of the parts in a water tank to try to hide the incident.

She was apprehended at a border crossing in August 2017. In 2018, a Yemeni criminal court condemned her to death, claiming that she provided medications without authorisation, caused Mahdi’s death, and sought to conceal the crime.