Nimisha Priya Age, Husband, Family, Biography & More

Some Lesser Known Facts About Nimisha Priya

• Nimisha Priya is an Indian nurse whose death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court of Yemen in 2023 for murdering a Yemeni man, Talal Abdo Mahdi, by an injection of anaesthetic and cutting the body into 10 pieces.

• She shifted to Yemen after completing her formal education in Kerala, India and started working as a nurse in several hospitals.

• According to one source, Nimisha moved to Yemen from Kerala in 2011, and according to another source, Nimisha shifted from Kerala to Yemen in 2012. Her husband, Tomy Thomas, used to work in Qatar as a driver, and after their marriage, he moved to Yemen and started working at a petrol pump as an unskilled labourer while Nimisha continued working as a nurse in Yemen.
  

  An alleged photo of Nimisha Priya during her wedding

• Thomas quit his job when their daughter was born while Nimisha kept working as a nurse. As they could not live in Yemen comfortably due to financial problems, Nimisha stayed in Yemen while Thomas moved to Kerala, India in April 2014 with their daughter.

• They decided to open a small clinic in 2015; however, for the licence of the clinic, they required a Yemeni citizen’s reference. Nimisha suggested a clothing shop owner named Talal Abdo Mahdi to Tomy Thomas who agreed to that as Mahdi looked like a good person to him, and he once met Mahdi when he was living in Yemen.
  

  A few photos of Nimisha Priya (with her husband Tomy Thomas in the middle)

• As per sources, Nimisha and Mahdi first met each other at her previous clinic during one of Mahdi’s visits when his wife was pregnant. The owner of the clinic where she was working, Abdul Lateer, got upset with her when she told him about her own clinic; however, he later agreed to invest 33% in Nimisha’s clinic.

• Nimisha later told Mahdi that his help was not required; however, Mahdi helped her with a small amount of money and acquired materials for her clinic as well. When Nimisha came to Kerala for one month in January 2015, Mahdi accompanied her. He visited many other tourist places in Kerala including Thomas’ home in Thodupuzha. Tomy Thomas and their daughter could not return to Yemen as a civil war broke out in 2015.

• Talal Abdo Mahdi started harassing her once he found that Nimisha’s husband could not return and she was alone in Yemen. He forcibly took money from the clinic’s earnings by barging into her clinic multiple times and lied to the staff on multiple occasions that he was Nimisha’s husband.
  

  Talal Abdo Mahdi, the alleged harasser of Nimisha Priya whom she later killed

• Mahdi took a photo of her wedding when he visited India which he allegedly morphed into a fake wedding picture of him and Nimisha. He later convinced his family and other people including the clinic staff that he married Nimisha in India and showed the fake picture to them.
  

  Nimisha Priya’s clinic in Yemen in 2016

• When one of the clinic staff told Nimisha about it, she was shocked as she did not know the lies Mahdi was spreading about her. She approached Mahdi’s father; however, he did not take her complaints seriously. She was jailed for 16 days in accordance with Yemeni laws when she filed a complaint at a police station in Sana’a in 2016. Mahdi showed a fake marriage certificate in court after which they were freed from jail.

• In an interview, Nimisha alleged that Mahdi confiscated her passport and kept on harassing her in different ways and said,
  

  He confiscated my passport, he forced me to live with him. He would come to my house inebriated and attack me physically, threaten me to obey him, inflict injuries on me. He used to even bring his friends to my house at night, force me to do sexual favours for them. I used to run out each time to protect myself. Those were sleepless nights for me, I had no one to help or support me. I was all alone. Yemen is not a place where one would see women out at night. But I would run through the road out of my house, escaping from the assaults.”

  

  A photo of Talal Abdo Mahdi who was murdered by Nimisha Priya

• In an interview, Nimisha’s husband, Tomy Thomas, claimed that Nimisha could speak Arabic, but she could not read the language. Mahdi allegedly got 67% shares of the clinic written in his name while preparing the documents of the clinic, with 33% of the shares in Abdul Lateer’s name. Thomas alleged that Mahdi also got other types of equipment and vehicles of the clinic registered under his name.

• According to Thomas, whenever Mahdi confiscated a sim card, Nimisha obtained another sim card; Nimisha reportedly used around 22 sim cards to contact Thomas. Mahdi also had many land fraud, vehicle fraud, and money fraud cases in various police stations.

• In an interview, Nimisha said that the idea to sedate Mahdi was given by a jail warden of the jail where Mahdi was frequently jailed. Nimisha was told by the jail warden that once Mahdi was unconscious with the effect of sedatives, she could easily obtain her passport from him and return to India. Allegedly, Mahdi was an alleged drug addict, hence when she once injected with a sedative, it did not affect him.
  

  A photo of Nimisha Priya’s passport

• On 25 July 2017, Nimisha injected him with Ketamine when Mahdi was taking drugs at her home which caused him to fall on the ground within a few minutes, and he screamed before passing away at the age of 24 years. Nimisha got tensed upon seeing this and called a fellow Yemeni nurse named Hanan who lived below her house in Al Deydh and told her about Mahdi.

• Hanan worked with Nimisha and knew Mahdi’s acts and decided to chop Mahdi’s body into pieces and throw them in a nearby water tank. Nimisha claimed that she got anxious and took tablets for the anxiety attack while Hanan cut Mahdi’s body into pieces. Local people later complained of a foul smell coming out of the water tank after which police discovered Mahdi’s body pieces which led to the arrests of Nimisha and Hanan in August 2017. ^[1]The New Indian Express

• In August 2020, a local court sentenced Nimisha to death and Hanan to life imprisonment. An appeal court upheld her death sentence on 7 March 2022, but it told Nimisha that if Mahdi’s family pardoned her, the death sentence could be avoided. Under Islamic law, the death penalty can be waived if the victim’s family pardons the convict, and this can involve payment of blood money (compensation paid to the victim’s family).

• When the appeal court upheld the death sentence, Nimisha wrote a letter in Malayalam which read,
  

  I did not commit murder. For making our lives better, with my husband’s permission, I took a certain path. But I fell into the trap of certain people I trusted and ended up in a tragic situation.”

  

  A letter written by Nimisha Priya in Malayalam

• A forum named Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council was established in 2020 to help her. A case in the Delhi High Court by a Delhi-based lawyer named Subhash Chandran K.R. after which a seven-member delegation was formed to meet Mahdi’s family to negotiate the payment of blood money.

• The delegation included Premakumari and Priya’s daughter, Michelle Tomy Thomas, Subhash Chandran K.R. and Deepa Joseph, another Delhi-based lawyer who is the vice president of the action council, Babu John, the convenor of the council, Rafeek Ravuther of the Centre for Indian Migrant Studies, and Nizar Kochery, an Indian lawyer based in Doha; however, due to visa issues, they could not travel to Yemen.
  

  Nimisha Priya’s daughter, Michelle Tomy Thomas, mother, Premakumari, and husband, Tomy Thomas (left to right) during an appeal for mercy to her

• A Yemen-based activist named Samuel Jerome said that Mahdi’s family did not show any signs of animosity when he met them in court during the hearings. Jerome was the first person Priya reached out to for help when she was arrested in 2017. In April 2022, it was reported that Mahdi’s family demanded compensation (blood money) of 50 million Yemeni rials (approx. Rs 1.5 crores). ^[2]The New Indian Express
  

  Fundraiser campaign for Nimisha Priya

• On 13 November 2023, Nimisha’s appeal for the acquittal of her death sentence was rejected by the Supreme Court of Yemen following which there were allegations that Nimisha was not given adequate legal aid during her case. It was reported that the President of Yemen only could pardon Nimisha Priya.

• On 17 November 2023, a Rajya Sabha MP of the Communist Party of India (CPI) named Binoy Viswam wrote a letter to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help Nimisha Priya and intervene in the matter. ^[3]Asian News International