Malayali nurse Nimisha Priya, who was issued a death sentence in Yemen in 2020, will be executed on July 16, reported The Indian Express on Tuesday.

Priya, from Kerala’s Palakkad, was imprisoned in Yemen for the alleged murder of Yemeni citizen Talal Abdo Mehdi in July 2017.

In 2020, she was sentenced to death by a trial court in the capital Sanaa. Her appeal was rejected by the Yemeni Supreme Judicial Council in November 2023. However, it kept open the option of paying blood money, or the amount paid in compensation to the family of a person who has been killed.

On December 30, news reports claimed that Al-Alimi, who is the chairperson of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, had approved the death sentence handed to Priya.

“Options are still open,” Samuel Jerome Baskaran, a social worker involved in negotiations with the Yemeni government and Mehdi’s family, was quoted as saying by The Indian Express on Tuesday. “The government of India can intervene in the matter to save her life.”

India’s Ministry of External Affairs had said on December 31 that it was aware of the situation and was extending help to Priya and her family in the matter.

Priya’s mother has been negotiating with Mehdi’s family to secure a waiver of the death sentence.

Priya went to Yemen in 2008 to help her parents, who were daily wage labourers. She worked at hospitals in Yemen before starting her clinic in 2015.

Differences came up between Priya and Mehdi, her business partner, after she questioned him about the alleged embezzlement of funds, her family has claimed.

Priya’s mother alleged in a plea that Mehdi tortured her daughter under the influence of drugs for years and held her at gunpoint several times. The plea also alleged that Mehdi confiscated Priya’s passport so that she could not leave the country.

Mehdi died from an overdose of sedatives Priya allegedly injected him with during an attempt to retrieve her passport.