By Justice Markandey Katju-
(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman of the Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own.)
Nimisha Priya, a native of Kerala, is reportedly scheduled to be executed in Yemen on July 16 for the alleged 2017 murder of her business partner Talal Abdo Mahdi, a Yemeni citizen.
Nimisha, born in Kerala on 1.1.1989, had migrated to Yemen as a nurse, and was convicted for murder by a Yemen court. She has been on death row since 2018 for the murder.
In 2014 she left her job as a nurse to start her own clinic. According to Yemeni law, she needed a Yemeni business partner, so she entered into a partnership with Talal Abdo Mahdi, a local businessman, and opened Al Aman Medical Clinic, a 14 bed facility, financing it with borrowed money.
After starting the clinic, Priya started having issues with her partner. She alleged he stole funds from her, forging documents to show that he was the sole owner of the clinic, and that he was her husband (though she was married with a daughter) and subjected her to years of physical abuse, financial exploitation, and physical and mental threats. He also took away her passport and other documents, and prevented her from speaking to her family in India.
Although she reported all this to the local police in 2016, they did not intervene.
In July 2017, Priya dosed Talal with ketamine, causing him to die of an overdose. According to Priya, she had no intention to kill Talal but only sedate him, allowing her to retrieve her passport and other documents. After his death she allegedly approached another nurse who cut up Talal’s body and disposed it off in a water tank.
Her appeal against her death sentence was rejected by Yemen’s Supreme Judicial Council, and it was approved by the Yemeni President. With only hours remaining for her execution, Priya’s only hope is by a pardon by Talal’s family members on her paying ‘blood money’.
What would I have done if I had been the judge in this case?
There is no doubt that Talal mentally and/or physically tortured Priya for a long time in many of the ways she alleged, to take away her share of the partnership money, otherwise why would she have been driven to take this extreme step (even disbelieving her version that she had no intention to kill)?
On the facts and circumstances of the case I would have certainly not imposed a death sentence, but given her a sentence of about 10 years imprisonment, with possibility of earlier release on showing good behavior in jail.
