US death penalty row: Despite Trump’s push, moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania keeps alive lone Indian

43 Indians are waiting for death in prisons in 11 foreign countries.

New Delhi: While Nimisha Priya’s fate remains uncertain in Yemen, a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania has kept alive the lone citizen of India on the death row in the United States, even as President Donald Trump’s administration has been seeking the harshest punishment for illegal migrants convicted of committing capital crimes.

As efforts to save Nimisha Priya, a nurse from Palakkad in Kerala, who was awarded capital punishment in Yemen in 2018, are on, the Ministry of External Affairs recently stated that altogether 43 citizens of India were on the death row in 11 countries, including one in the United States, four in China and one in Pakistan.

The United Arab Emirates has the highest number of Indians – 21 – on death row in its jails. Seven Indians, who have been awarded capital punishment, are lodged in the jails in Saudi Arabia, Kirti Vardhan Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs, informed the Lok Sabha last week.

Shahzadi, originally a resident of Banda in Uttar Pradesh, was hanged in the UAE on February 15 after being convicted of killing a four-month-old child. The UAE authorities informed the Embassy of India in Abu Dhabi about her execution only on February 28. Later, two more Indian prisoners – Muhammed Rinash Arangilottu and Muraleedharan Perumthatta Valappil – were also executed in the jails in the UAE.

Raghunandan Yandamuri from Andhra Pradesh is the lone Indian on the death row in the United States. He was awarded capital punishment on November 20, 2014, for murdering his neighbour, Satyavathi Venna, and her 10-month-old granddaughter, Saanvi Venna, on October 22, 2012, during a botched attempt to kidnap the child. His execution was scheduled for February 23, 2018, but it was halted due to a moratorium on the death penalty announced by Pennsylvania’s Democrat Governor Tom Wolf in February 2015. Wolf’s successor and fellow Democrat, John Shapiro, continued with the moratorium on the execution of the death-row prisoners.

Trump’s Democrat predecessor Joe Biden believed that the US must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level, except in cases of terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder. He had commuted sentences awarded to 37 of the 40 convicts on the federal death row in December 2024. But, immediately after returning to the White House as the 47^th American president on January 20 this year, Trump issued an Executive Order, instructing the US Department of Justice’s Attorney General to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use”, including the killing of a law enforcement officer or “a capital crime committed by an illegal alien present in this country” and to encourage state attorneys general to bring state capital charges for such crimes. However, contrary to the mood in the White House, several state lawmakers, including those from Trump’s Republican Party, moved Bills to abolish the death penalty.

Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016, but lost in 2020, only to win again in 2024. The swing state now has a split government with the governor's office being held by a Democrat, and the state house and state senate being controlled by the Democrats and the Republicans. So, notwithstanding the Trump Administration’s stand in favour of the death penalty, unless a major change in the political landscape in Pennsylvania leads to the withdrawal of the moratorium on execution, Raghunandan Yandamuri, now imprisoned at the State Correctional Institute in Somerset, will remain alive.

Yandamuri is one of 175 citizens of India incarcerated in the US, undergoing trial or convicted of committing crimes. Of the 10574 Indians imprisoned in foreign jails, the highest number – 2773 – is in the UAE, followed by 2379 in Saudi Arabia, and 1357 in Nepal.  China and Pakistan have 183 and 246 Indian citizens in their jails, respectively.