"Not Racist" Indian Father Gets Life In Prison

Last week, a jury in Atlanta sentenced 68-year-old Chiman Rai to life behind bars. Why you ask? He was convicted of ordering a hit man to kill his African-American daughter-in-law, Sparkle Michelle Rai.

She was strangled with a vacuum cord and stabbed more than a dozen times on April 26, 2000. What makes this case more savage was the fact that while her last breath was being choked from her, she reached for her baby daughter Analla. Sparkle was 22 years old at the time of her murder. ...

Rai had Sparkle killed because she married his son Rajeeve "Ricky" Rai, who is now 27, a month earlier. Rai viewed the young woman as unacceptable because she was black, prosecutors in the case have said. The case went unsolved until a break two years ago indicated that their relationship was the murder motive.

According the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, defense lawyer Don Samuel argued that while Rai may have hired a hit man, he didn't order such a brutal killing. And while there was evidence that Rai, a native of India, believed his son's marriage would cast a stigma on his family in caste-conscious Indian society, Samuel said Rai wasn't a racist and had strong support in the African-American community in Jackson, Miss., where he had run a grocery and other businesses. He also taught math at Alcorn State University. A dozen nonfamily witnesses, black and white, testified they had never seen the 68-year-old Rai act like a bigot.

"A racist? Somebody is lying," said Rickey King, a black businessman who owned a tire shop by Rai's store in Jackson, Miss.

Whether this man was racist or not, Rai put the wheels in motion for this young sister to be murdered. Also, what caste-conscious society condones murder as a way of keeping a stigma from being placed on a family?

Unfortunately, this case is another example of how RACE MATTERS EVERYWHERE, period. Being "black" is always viewed as a negative not just in America but all over the world. It can often affect social status and earning potential in many non-American cultures. Many families fear their financial and social viability when someone of a different race is included into their lineage .

For some, as in Mr. Rai's case, this fear is so great that it provokes them to do the unthinkable.