Centre to SC: Govt made 'utmost possible' efforts in Nimisha Priya execution case

The Centre, on July 14, told the Supreme Court that the Government of India is doing whatever is “utmost possible” in the case of Indian nurse Nimisha Priya, who is facing execution for murder in Yemen on July 16.

Attorney General R Venkataramani told a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta that having regard to the sensitivity and status of Yemen as a place, there is nothing much the Government of India can do.

"There is a point up to which the Government of India can go and we have reached that point," the top law officer said.

Earlier, sources said that the gravity of charges against Indian nurse Nimisha Priya, who has been sentenced to death by a Yemeni court after being convicted of murdering a citizen of the country, has made it difficult for the efforts to seek relief for her to succeed.

With Priya likely to be executed on July 16 in Yemen, there have been calls by her family and various political parties and organisations to the Indian government to make diplomatic efforts to save her.

According to Yemeni court documents, Nimisha Priya in July 2017 allegedly drugged and murdered her local business partner, Talal Abdo Mehdi and, with the help of another nurse, chopped his body and disposed of the dismembered parts in an underground tank.