Washington, June 19: The trial of an Indian American accused of hiring hitmen to kill his daughter-in-law because she was black began in Atlanta this week and is grabbing headlines in an year when a black man is likely to be elected US President.
Chiman Rai, 68, is accused of having paid $10,000 to a known criminal through a business acquaintance and his friend to kill Sparkle Reid whom his son married in 2000 after dating her for one and a half years.
The murder was unresolved until 2004 when one of two women who accompanied the hitman to Reid’s apartment was detained on a drug charge by Atlanta police. The woman confessed during questioning about the drug offence that she and a friend had witnessed the murder of Sparkle Reid.
These two witnesses knocked on Reid’s door and the unsuspecting girl, holding her 7-month-old baby, opened the door of her apartment to the women, according to the prosecution. The alleged hitman, Cleveland Clark, then rushed through the door from behind the two women, pushed 22-year-old Reid to the ground, stabbed her 13 times and strangled her with the cord of her vacuum cleaner.
Reid’s husband, Rajeeve “Ricky” Rai, had met her after his father hired her as a receptionist at the hotel owned by the Rai family in late 1998.
The two started dating and two months later, Reid was pregnant with Ricky’s daughter, Analla, who was unharmed during the murderous attack.
Chiman Rai’s family has been in the US since 1970. He taught mathematics at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, which is ironically a black institution.
He subsequently became a successful businessman running a supermarket and later a hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, where his son was helping him with the family business.
The son, who has since married an Indian girl and lives in Louisiana, had told Reid’s relatives that his parents were racist, according to court testimony.
He is expected be a witness in the case, which is expected to grab attention in American South in a year when anything to do with Blacks has special resonance because of current US politics.
