A 28-year-old DeWitt Township woman was sentenced to five to 15 years in prison for the death of her husband, an MSU professor.

Jonaki Ray was sentenced by Clinton County Circuit Court Judge Randy Tahvonen Monday, court officials said.

A Clinton County jury found Ray guilty of voluntary manslaughter on March 1. The court believes Ray did not premeditate the killing and that she meant to stab and kill her husband. Ray stabbed Dinesh Balagangadhar, a mechanical engineering professor, in the heart and lungs on July 1. Balagangadhar died that day of stab wounds.

Immediately after the incident, Ray told police three different stories about how she accidentally stabbed her husband while cutting vegetables in their DeWitt Township home.

At the trial, Ray told the jury how her husband abused her, and she stabbed him out of self defense when he was pulling her by the hair across a kitchen counter. Her attorney, Frank Reynolds, submitted as evidence a handwritten note by Balagangadhar that said, “I will never hit my wife again.”

Ray and Reynolds said she was scared to tell anyone about the abuse because of the couple’s Indian ethnicity.

Marsha Perilloux, a probation officer for the Department of Corrections in Clinton County, said Ray will be eligible for parole in five years, but the decision belongs to a parole board.

“In her case, it is very likely that she will get out,” Perilloux said. “It all depends on her adjustment to prison and if she is well-behaved.”

Perilloux said Ray will have an orientation in which prison officials will test and classify her to determine under which security conditions she will serve time.

“They’ll get a better view of her background,” she said. “Then they’ll place her in one of the female correction facilities.”

Shannon Murphy can be reached at murphy78@msu.edu.