A native of India who became a prominent businessman in the United States was found guilty of murder last week for hiring hit-men to kill his daughter-in-law because she was Black.
A jury in Fulton County, Georgia was convinced by prosecution arguments that 69-year-old Chiman Rai was so angered by his son marrying an African American woman that he hired hit-men to kill her.
Twenty-two year-old Sparkle Michelle Rai was found strangled and stabbed more than a dozen times eight years ago. The senior Rai immigrated to the United States in 1970 and for a while taught math at Mississippi’s predominantly Black Alcorn State University.
The prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty in the case and the jury rendered a death sentence the day after finding Rai guilty.
The case was broken when a young woman was arrested on another charge and tried to improve her situation by helping police solve a crime she said she witnessed several years before. The crime was the stabbing of Sparkle Michelle Rai. (source: Taylor Media Services)