For Nimisha Priya, Indian nurse on death row for murder in Yemen, hope hangs by a thread — a pardon from victim’s family

Samuel Jerome Baskaran, a social worker who is currently involved in the negotiations with government officials in Yemen and Talal’s family, told The Indian Express that the President’s order reached the prosecutor on Monday, December 30. “The key to Nimisha’s life now rests with the family of Talal. She will live if they forgive her. Our job is to convince the family to do that,’’ he told The Indian Express.

Samuel, however, said the negotiators were chasing a very tight deadline. “We had an excellent first phase of mediation. We established contact with Talal’s family, but the mediation did not continue because the Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council (set up in 2020 to raise the required funds for negotiations) did not send the second installment of funds. Our immediate task is to resume the negotiations and hopefully, get Talal’s family to forgive her, because all legal options have been exhausted. We have barely four weeks left with us,’’ he said.

Advocate Deepa Joseph, Vice-Chairperson of the Save Nimisha Action Council, said an amount of $40,000 was required for the negotiations and the legal process. “Earlier, we had paid $20,000 via the Indian mission to the lawyer in Yemen. Due to some confusion within the Action Council, the remaining amount could not be transferred. We have now transferred the second installment of the negotiation amount through the Indian mission in capital Sanaa,” she said.

On December 31, the Ministry of External Affairs said it would extend “all possible help” to Nimisha. Since April, Nimisha’s mother Prema Kumari, a domestic worker in Kochi, has been camping in Yemen. In December last year, Kumari had approached the Delhi High Court to secure an exemption from the travel ban to conflict-ridden Yemen. Since her arrival in Sanaa, Kumari has had a few meetings with Nimisha in prison, Samuel said.

A business plan gone awry

Raised by a single mother, Nimisha was in her 20s when she left for Yemen to work as a nurse at a health centre outside Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa.

In 2011, she returned to Kerala to marry Tomy Thomas, then a driver in Qatar, before returning to Yemen with him. Thomas told The Indian Express that in mid-2014, he returned to Kerala with their infant daughter since Nimisha wanted to open a clinic of her own and he hoped to raise funds from well-wishers back home. His departure was followed by the civil war in Yemen in September 2014, after which India imposed travel restrictions to the conflict-ridden country.

Three years later, Nimisha was arrested for murdering 24-year-old Talal.

In an open letter released by Nimisha after her arrest, she accused Talal of mental, physical and financial abuse. The 2017 letter and accounts shared by Nimisha with her mother and husband paint a picture of how her business plans in Yemen went all wrong.

Talal Abdo Mehdi, the Yemeni citizen whose murder Nimisha has been convicted of.

According to Nimisha’s letter, it was around October 2014 that she met Talal, whose family frequented the clinic where she worked. During a conversation with Nimisha, Talal is said to have expressed his desire to see India, while she shared with him her plan to open her own clinic.

Since Yemeni laws require local partnership in ventures started by foreigners, Nimisha, the letter said, sought help from Talal in completing the paperwork for the proposed clinic. The letter stated, “I gave Talal the money (6 lakh Yemen riyal) to pay the building owner and complete the paperwork for the clinic.’’

Accompanied by Talal, her family said, Nimisha arrived in Kerala for her daughter’s baptism in January 2015. She returned to Yemen a month later with the funds Thomas had raised. “Then the war in Yemen got worse and India issued a travel ban. That was the last time my daughter and I saw Nimisha,” Thomas had told The Indian Express last year.

Nimisha, meanwhile, proceeded with her business plan with Talal’s help.

Raised by a single mother, Nimisha was in her 20s when she left for Yemen to work as a nurse at a health centre outside Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa.

According to the letter, following the launch of her clinic on April 17, 2015, Talal allegedly got fake papers claiming a 33 per cent share in the business. Nimisha also accused him of torturing her for money, taking away her passport and other documents and getting a fake marriage certificate made to show them as a couple.

She filed a police complaint against Talal in Sanaa, but the dispute landed both of them in jail. According to a court order dated February 16, 2016, Talal returned to Nimisha the documents related to the clinic and property.

While both of them were released from jail, Talal went back to jail in another cheating case. According to her letter, Nimisha, meanwhile, kept visiting Talal in jail to persuade him to return her passport and get him to sign on the divorce papers.

In July 2017, during one of those visits, Nimisha allegedly injected Talal with sedatives, leading to his death.

In 2020, a trial court awarded Nimisha three death sentences. The appeal court expunged one of these death sentences, a verdict which was upheld by the Supreme Court of Yemen.

A family’s agonising wait

Nimisha’s mother Prema Kumari said they learnt about her troubles through the media. “It was through others that Tomy (Nimisha’s husband Tomy Thomas) got to know that Nimisha was in jail. I came to know about the incident only through newspaper reports of her conviction on May 5, 2018,’’ Prema Kumari had told The Indian Express earlier.

Back in Kerala, Thomas, an auto driver, shifted his 13-year-old daughter to a residential school to keep the news of her mother’s death sentence from her.

“We have told her that her mother is in jail due to some trouble. I delete all messages related to the case before giving her my phone. At school, the teachers have been told not to talk about the case. If Nimisha makes it to the news, I call the school to ensure the newspaper is kept away from students that day.”