The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre to consider an NGO’s plea to permit its representatives to visit Yemen to help negotiate a pardon deal for Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya, who is facing execution for the murder of a Yemeni national.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta passed the order after recording the submission of senior advocate R. Basant, appearing for NGO Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council, and attorney-general R. Venkataramani, representing the Centre in the matter.
The bench passed the order after Basant sought permission for the representatives of the NGO and a Muslim cleric from Kerala to visit Yemen and help Nimisha’s family negotiate a pardon by paying blood money.
The senior counsel told the bench that the NGO would require a direction from the apex court to consider its plea to visit Yemen in view of the travel ban imposed by the Centre.
Venkataramani maintained that Nimisha’s family and her legal team were already working on the issue. “We don’t want anything counterproductive to happen. We want the woman to come back safely,” he said.
When the bench asked whether the execution was stayed indefinitely, the petitioner’s counsel said no date had been given as of now.
“Which means something is working,” Venkataramani said.
The bench said the petitioner could make a representation to the government. “It is stated at the Bar that as of now, the execution has been stayed. The petitioner wishes to make some representation to the government, which they are free to move and upon such representation being made, the government will consider the same on its own merits. List the writ petition on August 14, 2025,” it said.
On July 14, the Centre had told the Supreme Court that its diplomatic efforts to stave off Nimisha’s execution, originally scheduled on July 16, had virtually failed.
“We have also established a negotiating link. But there is a point till which the Government of India can go. We have reached it. We have also told the public prosecutor there (Yemen) that if the execution can be suspended, we can…but it has not worked out,” Venkataramani had told the bench.
However, the execution was stayed following the intervention of Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliyar, the Grand Mufti of India and a prominent Sunni religious leader. On July 10, the apex court had asked the Centre and Venkataramani to apprise the court of the steps taken by the government to assist Nimisha in response to the petition filed by the NGO.
Priya, a nurse from Kerala’s Palakkad district, was convicted of murdering her Yemeni business partner, Talal Abdo Mahdi, in 2017. She was sentenced to death in 2020, and her final appeal was rejected in 2023. She is imprisoned in a jail in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.
K.R. Subhash Chandran, who filed the petition on behalf of the NGO, said Nimisha was a “victim of war” as she did not get a proper legal defence at a time Yemen was gripped by a civil war. “She was forced to sign many confessional documents in the local language (Arabic), which led to her capital punishment. After being sentenced by a trial court in 2020, she filed appeals against the death penalty in appellate courts, which were also dismissed by the first appellate court as well as the Supreme Judicial Council of Yemen,” the petition stated.