Go to Yemen but at own risk: Delhi HC to nurse’s mother

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday allowed the mother of Nimisha Priya, a nurse sentenced to death for murder in Yemen, to travel there along with another person “at her risk and responsibility” to negotiate ‘blood money’ for the victim’s family as a last resort to save her daughter.

Petitioner Premakumari, Priya’s mother, who hails from Kollengode in Kerala’s Palakkad, had moved the court seeking permission to travel along with others to the Eastern country where Indians are currently not allowed to go.

The family hopes that paying ‘blood money’ to the family of the victim, Talal Abdo Mahdi, spares Priya’s life. Under Sharia law, ‘blood money’ is compensation paid by an offender or his kin to the family of the victim to obtain a pardon.

The Centre had told the court that India does not have diplomatic ties with Yemen and has closed down its embassy there.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Justice Subramonium Prasad asked the Centre to relax the travel advisory banning Indians travelling to Yemen as per the rule allowing an individual for specific and essential reasons for a limited time period at his or her own risk without any liability of the government.

“The court is inclined to direct the Centre to relax the notification for the petitioner, on the petitioner filing an affidavit to the effect that she will travel to Yemen with one Samuel for negotiating for release of her daughter at her risk and responsibility,” Justice Prasad ordered. Priya has been convicted of murdering Talal Abdo Mahdi, who died in July 2017, after she injected him with sedatives in order to get back her passport from his possession.