Supreme Court Issues Notice To Attorney General In Plea For Media Gag In Nimisha Priya Case

The Supreme Court today issued notice to the Attorney General of India in response to a petition by evangelist Dr. KA Paul seeking a temporary order to prevent the media from reporting the developments related to the case of Malayali nurse Nimisha Priya, who is on death row in Yemen.

A bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta directed that notice be served to the Attorney General's office today and listed the matter for further hearing on August 25, 2025. The Court tagged the plea with another plea seeking directions to the Centre to secure her release.

“Let notice be issued to learned Attorney General, returnable on 25th August, 2025. Let copy of this petition be served to the office of learned Attorney General today itself”, the Court ordered.

During the brief hearing today, Paul said he had received a letter from Nimisha Priya and her mother, requesting that no public statements be made about the case. He claimed that he has played a significant role in negotiating and postponing her execution twice as a peacemaker.

He explained that delicate negotiations were underway and claimed certain individuals were making false claims that they had paid money or negotiated on Nimisha Priya's behalf. He said that Nimisha Priya could be executed on August 24 or 25 and sought a complete gag order.

“She will be put to death on 24th or 25th. I want just 3 days not to talk about this case. Complete gag order. Let the government speak. But not those two people. Continuously they are appearing in the media and making false statements”, he said.

The Court issued notice to the Attorney General, returnable on August 25.

Background

Nimisha Priya, a 36-year-old nurse from Kerala, is facing the death penalty in Yemen for the 2017 murder of Yemeni national Talal Abdo Mahdi. She allegedly tried to sedate Talal with ketamine to recover her passport, which he had allegedly seized after forging documents to claim she was his wife. The sedative overdose led to his death.

She was sentenced to death in 2018, retried in 2020 with the same outcome, and lost her appeal before Yemen's Supreme Judicial Council in 2023. The Yemeni President later approved the death sentence.

Under Shariat law, a death sentence can be set aside if the victim's family pardons the convict in exchange for “blood money.” The organisation Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council, formed by her relatives and supporters, has been trying to secure such a pardon.

On July 18, the Supreme Court allowed the Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council to make a representation to the Government for permission for a small team, including a representative of Kerala Sunni Islamic leader Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musaliyar, to travel to Yemen to meet Talal's family. The organisation claimed the cleric's earlier intervention had helped secure a postponement of Priya's execution, which was originally scheduled for July 16.

A day before Priya's scheduled execution on, reports came in that the execution had been postponed with the help of private interventions. The reprieve however was short-lived, as the family of the victim-Talal Abdo Mahdi, whom Priya is accused of killing, came out with a statement that they will not grant pardon to Priya.

Case no. – W.P.(C) No. 803/2025 

Case Title – Dr. K. A. Paul @ Kilari Anand Paul v. Union of India

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