The Delhi High Court asked the Centre on Thursday to take a decision within a week on a request to travel to Yemen from the mother of a Kerala woman who is on death row there for the murder of a Yemini national.
The lawyer for the central government informed the court that the top court in Yemen on November 13 dismissed the appeal of Nimisha Priya, who was working as a nurse in the West Asian country, against her sentence.
Priya has been convicted of murdering Talal Abdo Mahdi, who died in July 2017 after she injected him with sedatives in order to get her passport from his possession.
It was stated that Priya injected him with sedatives so that she could take her passport from him while he was unconscious. However, he died of an overdose.
Priya’s mother moved the high court earlier this year, seeking permission to travel to Yemen in spite of a travel ban for Indian nationals and negotiate the “blood money” to save her daughter.
Blood money refers to the compensation paid by an offender or his kin to the family of the victim.
On Thursday, the Centre’s lawyer said according to a notification issued recently, the travel ban may be relaxed and Indian nationals may be allowed to travel to Yemen for specific reasons and durations.
“In view of the representation, let the present petition be treated as a representation. Respondent is directed to decide the representation within one week from today,” Justice Subramonium Prasad ordered.
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The petitioner, represented by lawyer Subash Chandaran K R, had told the court earlier that the only way to save her daughter from the gallows was to negotiate with the deceased’s family by paying blood money and for which she has to travel to Yemen but due to the travel ban, she is unable to go there.
The “Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council” approached the high court last year, seeking a direction to the Centre to “facilitate diplomatic interventions as well as negotiations with the family of the victim on behalf of Nimisha Priya to save her life by paying blood money in accordance with the law of the land in a time-bound manner”.
The high court had earlier refused to direct the Centre to negotiate the payment of blood money to save the woman, but asked it to pursue the legal remedies against the conviction in Yemen.
In the earlier petition, it was alleged that Mahdi had forged documents to show that he was married to Priya and had subjected her to abuse and torture.
