The Government of India has refuted as “inaccurate” the recent claims made by Kanthapuram A P Abubakar Musliyar, the self-styled ‘Grand Mufti of India’, regarding the status of Indian nurse Nimisha Priya’s death sentence in Yemen, sources said on Tuesday.According to sources in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the Grand Mufti’s assertion that Nimisha Priya’s death sentence had been “completely overturned” lacks official confirmation and does not reflect the current diplomatic understanding of the case.On Monday, Musliyar claimed in a public statement that the death sentence of Nimisha Priya, a 37-year-old nurse from Kerala, had been fully revoked by Yemeni authorities. He added, however, that his office had not yet received any formal written communication confirming this decision from Yemen.Priya was convicted in 2018 for the 2017 murder of a Yemeni national named Mahdi. She had been sentenced to death and was scheduled for execution on July 16, 2025, though the execution has since been postponed.Reports had earlier suggested that a decision to overturn her death sentence was made during a high-level meeting in Sana’a. This meeting reportedly included senior Yemeni scholars — selected by Sheikh Umar Hafeel Thangal at the Grand Mufti’s request — who engaged in discussions with Northern Yemen’s ruling authorities and international diplomats.Musliyar’s office further claimed that some key decisions regarding the case were taken during this meeting, although further deliberations are said to be ongoing.
MEA calls Indian Grand Mufti’s claim on Nimisha Priya’s death sentence ‘inaccurate’
