Prominent businessman and Lulu Group chairman MA Yusuff Ali, and former Supreme Court judge Justice Kurian Joseph attended a meeting organised in Dubai on Wednesday, November 9, to make efforts for the release of Indian nurse Nimisha Priya. Yusuff Ali and the ‘Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council’ are making efforts to help Nimisha by paying blood money if needed, a press statement said. Nimisha Priya is facing capital punishment in Yemen after being convicted under the charge of murder of a Yemeni businessman named Talal Abdo Mahdi.
Justice Kurian Joseph also heads the mediation team of ‘Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council’. According to a press release from the council, Yusuff Ali and the office bearers of the council “are trying to release Nimisha Priya by paying "Diya Money" (blood money), if necessary, depending on the verdict of the case in the Supreme Court of Yemen.” In 2020, a court in Yemen’s capital Sana'a had upheld her death sentence, leaving her with the sole option of paying blood money to the family of the deceased to gain pardon from them. Yusuff Ali had earlier paid blood money of about Rs 1 crore to save the life of an Indian national on death row in the United Arab Emirates.
Nimisha Priya, a native of Kerala’s Palakkad, was found guilty of murdering Talal Abdo Mahdi in 2017, after injecting him with sedatives to get her passport that was in his possession. Nimisha, who had been running a clinic in Yemen since 2015, alleged that Talal had abused and tortured her for two years and said that she had not meant to kill him. Later in 2020, an appeals court in Sana’a upheld the trial court verdict giving her the death penalty.
The ‘Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council’ has been making sustained efforts to help her. A petition was filed in the Delhi High Court urging the Union government to step in and assist Nimisha, but the court refused to do so. The court in April stated that it could not ask the Indian government to negotiate the payment of blood money. Later in May, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that the Union government was exploring all options including getting pardon for Nimisha.