Chiman Rai, 68, was convicted on seven charges, including felony murder and burglary. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty.

The story is that He disapproved his son getting married to a black female. Some people in India believe in the caste system.  Normally all the marraiges are arranged.  The parents usually pick matees.  Well it happens that his son ends up getting a black women ( Sparkle Rai) pregnant.  Quickly he felt like he needed to get married to her.

According to Associated Press reports, two women arrived at the apartment of Rai’s son Ricky and his new wife, pretending to deliver a package. A 300-pound hit man then choked Sparkle Reid Rai with a vacuum cleaner cord and stabbed her a dozen times within earshot of her 6-month-old daughter.

This case, which turned from a simple murder investigation into an alleged hate crime across two communities of color, highlights the complexity of race relations in a country that has often framed its prejudice in black and white.

But racial intolerance, sometimes in the form of violence, is increasingly more inclusive. Experts say that such bias is nothing new, although the national immigration debate has fueled that hate, giving bigots of all complexions more excuses to act on their ignorance.

Donna Lowry, who married Sparkle Reid’s father and is now raising the victim’s daughter, said, “It was such a shock to us when we found out a few years ago and we were floored.

“We had no idea it would go in this direction,” she told ABCNEWS.com today en route to the trial. “It’s mind-boggling. We are raising her biracial child and there is so much hatred on the other side of the family.”

Rai’s lawyer, Don Samuel, had earlier told ABCNEWS.com, “I’m arguing that my client is not guilty. There is no racial issue involved at all.”

A dozen witnesses of all colors who had known Rai — once a professor at two historically black colleges — said he was not a racist. But Rai’s former cellmate, a convicted forger, testified this week that the accused had made bigoted remarks while in jail, according to reports in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

American-born Amardeep Singh, director of the national Sikh Coalition, which defends the civil and legal rights of Sikhs, admits that his own ethnic group is capable of bigotry.

“You don’t come to American to learn to be a bigot,” Singh said. “There is bigotry in India. The caste system is deeply ingrained and South Asians in the U.S. still practice caste exclusion.”

And he, too, has been a victim

 The mother of victim, Donna Lowry Reid, adopted the 6 month old baby.  The father shortly left Atlanta and moved to Chicago.  He then married a new woman who this time happens to be an Indian.  He actually hid his former life to his new bride.  He has no contact with his own child since the murder and his new wife did not know his gruesome past.  Well that’s not the whole story.  There still is something very fishy here.