Kuntal Patel was accused of slipping her mother a ricin-like toxin in a plot inspired by a storyline in the American TV series

A woman has been cleared of attempting to kill her mother by poisoning her diet coke in a plot said to have been inspired by the cult American TV show Breaking Bad.

Kuntal Patel, 37, was accused of lacing her mother Meena’s drink with a ricin-like toxin after she “forbade” her from marrying her fiance.

Giving evidence in the trial, Patel admitted she fantasised about being a lead character in Breaking Bad in an obsession that drove her to pay £950 in the virtual currency Bitcoin for a quantity of deadly abrin.

“It was like I saw myself to be some kind of Mexican drug warlord. I would think it through as if I was the main character in Breaking Bad,” Patel said in evidence at Southwark crown court. “It was all a big mess. A complete and utter mess.”

Patel, a volunteer at the London Olympics, was found not guilty of attempted murder by a jury on Thursday. She had previously pleaded guilty to acquiring a biological agent or toxin.

As her relationship with her mother came under increasing strain, Patel admitted she emailed a poisons dealer in America to demand deadly toxins. In one email sent last December, she told her supplier something must have gone wrong because the “target drank all” of the poison but was still alive.

However, Patel told jurors that the emails were just part of a fantasy created to deal with the strain of her home life. The fantasy was alleged to have turned into a murder plot after she watched an episode of Breaking Bad when teacher turned drug dealer Walter White kills a rival with ricin-laced tea.

Explaining the emails to the poison dealer, Patel told the court: “By this time, because of the messages I received from my mum and because I couldn’t cope with it and I wanted to escape from it all, I started to fantasise about trying to kill myself or my mum,” she said.

“It was as if I was thinking through it as if I was in my own TV programme or a character in Breaking Bad. I was in a really strange place in my mind.”

The two-week trial heard that Patel, who was brought up a strict Gujrati Hindu, had never had a boyfriend or a Valentine’s Day card, and was desperate to settle down and have children.

Her profile on dating websites was written by her mother Meena, a magistrate who sits on the bench at Thames magistrates’ court in Bow, east London, who was described as “highly manipulative and controlling”.

She struck up a relationship with Niraj Kakad, who lived in Phoenix, Arizona, on the Asian dating website Shaadi.com and the pair got engaged on Thanksgiving in November 2012.

But her mother was “hell-bent” on scuppering Patel’s blossoming relationship and is said to have locked Patel in their home and beaten and bullied her in an attempt to break up the romance. Patel, a Barclays Bank graphic designer, was driven to despair and began researching ways to kill herself – or her mother – on the internet.

Patel showed little emotion as she was cleared of attempted murder. She will be sentenced on 7 November for acquiring a toxin.