The mother of a Pakistani woman who killed 17 people while trying to flee her arranged marriage said she regrets forcing her daughter into the unhappy union.

“I feel guilty and I think we should have not forced our daughter to marry Amjad as she did not like him,” Zakia Begum sobbed outside her mud-brick home Tuesday, urging other parents to give their daughters the right to marry whom they choose.

Begum’s daughter, newlywed Aasia Bibi, is accused of lacing her husband’s milk with rat poison, in a deadly plot hatched with her lover and aunt.

Zarina Begum, the young woman’s aunt, was arrested Wednesday after Pakistani police found out she knew about the plan to kill Mohamad Amjad, her niece’s husband.

Authorities believe Bibi’s boyfriend incited her with the original plot to kill Amjad and supplied her with the rat poison. He was arrested with her and confessed to police while in custody, they said.

After Amjad failed to drink the poisoned milk, his mother used it to make lassi, a yogurt drink, which she served to him and 27 members of his extended family.

The poisonous concoction killed 17 people including Amjad, his two brothers, three sister-in-law’s and eight children aged 7 to 12.

Police became suspicious of the 21-year-old bride after she seemed calm during the ordeal.

“Her husband was in a critical condition at a hospital and she looked as if nothing had happened and she was cool and calm at her home and it raised suspicions,” local police chief Zulfiqar Ali said.

Once in custody, police say the young woman confessed to poisoning Amjad, who was also her cousin.

Bibi, who lives in the southwest city of Muzaffargarh, was forced to marry in September and tried to flee her home and go back to her parents, only to be sent back to her husband.

Many parents in Pakistan arrange marriages for their daughters against their will and nearly 1,000 Pakistani women are killed by close relatives each year in so-called “honor killings” for marrying against the consent of their family or attempting to flee the unions.

With Post wires