A woman has been cleared of trying to kill her mother by poisoning her diet coke in a plot inspired by a storyline in Breaking Bad.

Kuntal Patel, 37, was accused of slipping her "controlling and selfish" mother Meena a ricin-like toxin after she "forbade" her from marrying her fiance.

It was alleged that Patel dreamed up her murder plot after becoming "addicted" to the American TV series and watching an episode in which drug lord Walter White kills an enemy with ricin-laced tea.

Patel, a volunteer at the London Olympics, admitted fantasising about killing her magistrate mother, who was "hell-bent" on breaking up her engagement and bullied and beat her.

She told London's Southwark Crown Court that she became suicidal and scoured the "dark web" looking for poisons.

She admitted trying to buy the deadly toxin abrin from American Jesse Korff, telling him she needed a "tasteless" toxin to get her mother "out of the way".

The jury of six men and six women, which had deliberated for just over three hours, cleared her of attempted murder, but convicted of acquiring a biological agent or toxin.

She had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to acquire a biological agent or toxin.

She showed little emotion as the verdict was given. She was remanded back into custody and will be sentenced on November 7.

The Barclays Bank graphic designer said the comments were part of a wild fantasy world in which she imagined herself as Walter White or a "Mexican drug warlord".

She wept in the witness box as she insisted she never actually poisoned her mother.

She told jurors: "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.

"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."

She added: "But I was living this other life. This was my own way of coping - it was my coping mechanism. It was how I survived daily."

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

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 breaking up her relationship, and is said to have locked Patel in their home, and beaten and bullied her in a bid to get her to stop seeing Mr Kakad.

Their relationship buckled under the pressure, and they broke up.

Driven to despair, Patel told how she slumped into a depression and began searching ways of killing herself on the internet.

In a series of increasingly desperate emails and texts, she confided in her friend about the "relentless" abuse and violence she suffered at the hand of her mother, who sits on the bench at Thames Magistrates' Court.

In one message in August 2012, she said: "My life is so messed up right now, I actually wish I was dead or wish my mum died. I hate her so much."

Patel, of Plaistow in east London, admitted paying Korff, who used the internet name "Snowman", £950 in the virtual currency bitcoins for abrin.

The poison was allegedly hidden in a red wax candle and delivered to London, but Patel said she "panicked" when she picked the package up and threw it away.