Consequences if Yemen executes Nimisha Priya

If attempts to save her fail, India must sanction the regime in Sanaa. It is also a moment to realise that death penalty is out of step with the evolving norms of penology

- Gopalkrishna Gandhi

Something tells me that Nimisha Priya will not be executed.

The Sharia law operating in the part of Yemen ruled by the Iran-backed Houthi forces has sentenced the 38-year-old nurse from Kerala to death for murdering her Yemeni business partner. Every plinth in that regime's politico-legal edifice has confirmed the sentence. The Palakkad-born Christian has for the many months now since her arrest and sentencing, been ready to face the firing squad, Yemen's preferred mode of enforcing the death penalty.

But whether because India matters, or because Nimisha’s case drew almost immediate world attention, or because Iran and Saudi Arabia counselled against the execution, the bullets meant to kill Nimisha have not left their casings yet. The Save Nimisha Priya International Council which has been coordinating her legal defence and Islamic clerics and scholars of repute in Kerala have been active publicly and through personal channels.

It seems to me that these efforts will not go in vain and the following four factors will also weigh in for her being spared the firing squad.

First, it seems beyond belief that despite the Sharia and the understandable fury of the dead man’s family, the powers that be in Sanaa are not aware that death-for-death and blood thirst are looked down upon by the world’s gaze.

Second, though the authorities in that part of Yemen are not accountable to international norms for human rights, and carry out the death penalty in prodigal numbers and in public, they cannot want to be seen as impervious to world sentiment.