Plea in Delhi High Court seeks Govt. intervention to pay 'blood money' to save Kerala woman sentenced to death for murder in Yemen

A plea has been filed before the Delhi High Court seeking a direction to the Central government to start diplomatic intervention to save a Kerala woman who is on death row in Yemen for the murder of a Yemeni national [Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council Through its Chairman v Union of India and Anr]..The plea filed by an organisation named Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council, has sought government to initiate negotiation with the family of the murdered victim so that her life can be saved by them paying blood money.Blood money refers to the compensation paid by an offender or his kin to the family of the victim..The woman Nimisha Priya was a nurse in Yemen. She was convicted of murder of a Yemeni national in 2017. It is alleged that she injected one Talal Abdo Mahdi with sedatives so that she could take her passport from him while he was unconscious. However, he died if overdose, the plea filed through advocate Subhash Chandran KR said. It also alleged that Mehdi had forged documents to show that he was married to her. He had sought his help to start her own clinic but he cheated on her financially and later started torturing her.A Yemeni court convicted her for the murder and sentenced to death in 2020. Though the sentence was appealed before a Sana’a court, which rejected the case earlier this month..The plea stated that even though another chance of appeal the Yemeni Supreme Court/Supreme Judicial Council exists with Priya, it is unlikely that she will be spared the punishment awarded by the lower court and therefore her only hope to come out of death sentence is if the victim’s family accepts blood money.“Now, the only way for her to escape from the death penalty is to gain pardon from the family of the deceased by paying blood money to the family in accordance with the law of land. It is come to know from the lawyer who represented her before the appeal court that the option for „blood money‟ is kept open by the appeal court,” the plea stated..It said that her only child, a nine-year-old girl is living in an orphanage, her mother is a domestic help in Kerala and her husband is a auto rickshaw driver. The entire family is facing serious challenges to deal with the ongoing legal processes there, the plea pointed out. “If family of the victim agreed to pardon her by receiving blood money, the petitioner is unable to pay the same as financial transactions to Yemen are also restricted by the Indian authorities. The petitioner herein as well as the family of Nimisha Priya has made many representation / communications to respondents regarding the case of Nimisha Priya but did not receive any positive reply from them,” the petition said.