Eight years ago Chiman Rai allegedly paid Mississippi hit men $10,000 to choke and stab his daughter-in law to death in her Union City apartment while her seven-month-old daughter was nearby.

Her offense? She married his son, an Indian.

Fulton County

Chiman Rai

Family

Sparkle Michelle Rai

And she was black.

On Monday Rai, 69, goes on trial in Atlanta for masterminding the murder of Sparkle Michelle Rai, 22. Fulton County prosecutors are asking for the death penalty as the family of the murder victim seeks finally to see justice served.

"The prosecutors have done a good job with this," said Rai's father, Bennet Reid Jr., Saturday. "We'll be there in the courtroom. For years my daughter has had no voice. Now, finally, her voice will be heard."

Rai, a native of India, brought his family to the U.S. in 1970. He taught math at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, later ran a supermarket and then bought a hotel in Louisville, Ky. where he hired Sparkle as a clerk.

There Sparkle met his son 18-year-old, Rajeeve "Ricky" Rai, who also worked at the hotel. The two fell in love and married. Sparkle's father and stepmother, Donna Lowry, a reporter for WXIA-TV in Atlanta, recalled later that Rai's family at first seemed to approve of their 18-year-old son dating a black woman.

But, said prosecutors, in April 2000 — a month after Sparkle and Ricky were married — a contract killer showed up at the door of the newlywed's Union City apartment, along with two women pretending to deliver a package.

When Sparkle opened the door, the 300-pound ex-con hit man attacked her with such savagery she didn't have time to throw up her arms and shield herself from his knife.

She was stabbed at least 13 times in the back, neck, chest and ribs. She was strangled and her throat slit. When Ricky, then 20, returned home from work he found her body and called police.

The couple's 7-month-old daughter, Analla, was unharmed in the next room. Sparkle's father and stepmother later assumed custody of the girl when Ricky Rai moved away from Atlanta.

A break in the case came four years later when one of the women who accompanied the alleged hit man to Sparkle Rai's house was arrested on a drug charge by Atlanta Police.

She told them she knew who killed Sparkle – and that she and a friend witnessed the killing. The women's stories led to what authorities now say was a murder plot concocted by Rai.

Rai and four others were arrested in September 2006 and charged in the murder. Rai's attorney could not be reached for comment Friday. At a bond hearing in 2006, defense attorney Mike McDaniel called Rai "as stable of a person as you're going to find."

– the AP contributed to this report.