• Source:JND
Add as a preferred

The Central government on Friday told the Supreme Court that only the family of Nimisha Priya should undertake efforts to secure a pardon for her, saying that the external organisation's involvement would not yield results.

R Venkataramani, the Attorney General, said, "I would personally advise… Her family has engaged a power of attorney. Family is the only, I think, entity which should be concerned with that. We are not talking about any outsider getting involved in it. Even with the best of intentions"

He added that if an external entity is allowed to intervene, it would further a narrative that the government was unable to do anything. "There is an organisation which wants to do a good Samaritan job. No difficulty at all. The government says I cannot do something. Then it becomes another news. So you build up on it. I don’t think that should happen in this case," he said.

"The Government has been trying to push in as many circles as possible. If the Government cannot do it, I don’t know whether an organisation can do it better,” he added.

Pardon comes first, blood money second, argues petitioner

The Centre said this while a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta was hearing a plea filed by the Save Nimisha Priya Action Council. Senior lawyer R Basant, appearing for the petitioner, had sought permission from the court to send a delegation to Yemen to convince the family of the victims to pardon Nimisha.

"Now the only request I have is this. We need to get the pardon first. Blood money comes as a second stage. First, the family has to forgive us. After forgiving us, the discussion on whatever the blood money comes,” he said.

The petitioner sought permission as there is a travel ban in Yemen. "Now Yemen is a country where anybody can’t go. There is a travel ban… The government of India, on special permission, can allow something," he said.

This comes after Grant Mufti of India Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musaliyar intervened in the issue and said that he reached out to some senior scholars in Yemen, urging them to consider the release of the 38-year-old nurse.

Reportedly, it was his intervention that led to a postponement of the execution of Nimisha. Basant also highlighted the same in the court, saying, Basant said, "I must inform Your Lordship and the Government of India that a very well-revered religious scholar from Kerala is also involved. All of them put together, the government and many other people and this cleric, they established contact and now the death sentence has been stayed."

Nimisha hails from Kerala's Palakkad and was found guilty of murdering her business partner Talal Abdo Mahdi in 2017 in Yemen. She was arrested while she was trying to flee Yemen. She was sentenced to death in 2020, after which she made an appeal against it which was rejected in 2023.