India, July 17 -- Nimisha Priya, the Kerala nurse on death row in Yemen, has temporarily been spared execution for murder, but her fate now rests significantly on one word: 'qisas'.

The brother of Talal Abdo Mahdi, the man Nimisha Priya is convicted of murdering, is angered by reports that the family would settle for blood money. And he has insisted on 'qisas', which means his family wants her killed.

Simply put, qisas, an Arabic word, means 'accountability'. In Sharia or Islamic jurisprudence, though, it is the term for retribution as justice, the idea of an eye for an eye.

So far, Nimisha Priya's fate hinged on another Islamic legal concept of 'diyya' - also spelt 'diya' or diyah' - an alternative concept for the rather simplistic 'q...