WASHINGTON: An Indian-origin professor- turned businessman in the US has been found guilty of hiring hitmen to murder his black daughter-in-law a month after she wed his son as he opposed their inter-racial marriage.
Chiman Rai, 69, faces the death penalty for allegedly paying two men USD 10,000 to kill Sparkle Michelle Rai, an African American, in April 2000 after her marriage to his son Rajeev Rai alias Ricky, with whom she had a infant daughter. The 22-year-old was found strangled and stabbed more than a dozen times at the couple's apartment.
The case grabbed headlines as an "honour killing" after police arrested Chiman Rai and four others following a tip off two years ago. A jury in Mississippi's Fulton County Rai guilty on seven charges, including felony murder and burglary, after two days of deliberations convinced that he was a racist and believed that the marriage would embarrass his family.
The prosecution has said it will seek death penalty against Rai, who immigrated with his family from India in 1970 and taught Maths at Alcorn State University in Mississippi for a decade before opening a supermarket and a hotel in Kentucky where Sparkle was an employee. Chiman, 74-year old Willie Fred Evans, Herbert Green, 60, and the two alleged hired killers-- brothers Cleveland, 46, and 43-year-old Carl Clark were indicted in 2006.
Rai was nailed on crucial testimony of two co-defendants Evans and Green who admitted to helping set up the killing because Rai told them that his son had stolen thousands of dollars from his businesses and may have a pile of cash and drugs in the apartment. The two men got probation in exchange for testimony.
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