Blood Money:
A nurse from Kerala, sentenced to death in Yemen for the 2017 murder, may be saved by ‘Diyah’ (blood money) under Islamic sharia law. Under the Islamic Sharia law, blood money, or ‘diya’, means that the accused provides financial compensation to the family of the victim in serious crimes such as murder. It is followed in countries that incorporate these laws in their legislation. The custom is practised predominantly in cases involving unintentional murder and culpable homicide. It is also invoked in murder cases wherein the victim’s kin choose not to retaliate through ‘qisas’ (a way of retribution under the Sharia). The end-goal, as the law says, is not to put a price tag on human life but to alleviate the plight and suffering of the affected family and their potential loss of income.
