The timid daughter of a well-respected magistrate, it is hard to imagine a less likely "Mexican drug warlord" than Kuntal Patel.

But, crushed by a barrage of alleged emotional and physical abuse at home, and fuelled by late-night sessions watching Breaking Bad, that is how she came to see herself.

To the outside world Patel, her mother Meena and younger sister Poonam, looked every inch the highly respectable and happy Hindu Gujarati family.

Privately-educated Patel graduated from university with a 2:1 in graphic design and went on to work for a string of financial companies, ending up at Barclays Bank in Canary Wharf.

But Southwark Crown Court heard that behind this veneer of respectability lay a deeply troubled and dysfunctional family life that led Patel to hunt for deadly poison on the dark web.

The family moved to Britain when Patel was a toddler and Poonam just a baby but they never knew their father, whom Patel met just once when she was 11 years old.

Jurors heard that Meena Patel was "highly manipulative and controlling" as the undisputed head of the house - demanding to know where her daughters were "every minute of every day".

The trio holidayed together, ate every meal together and opened each other's mail. When Patel decided she wanted to settle down and find a husband, it was her mother who wrote her profile for the dating website Shaadi.com.

But Patel's lust to finally break free and carve out a life of her own eventually led to her family being ripped apart.

She met Niraj Kakad, who lived in Phoenix, Arizona, online and the pair got engaged on Thanksgiving 2012.

But the court heard that from the beginning Patel's mother was jealous of her daughter's relationship and "hell-bent" on breaking it up.

When Mr Kakad flew to London to meet Patel for the first time, her mother demanded she meet him first, and she constantly berated her daughter for their relationship.

She would yo-yo between giving Mr Kakad her seal of approval, and then demanding her daughter never see him again.

And the court heard how she unleashed a torrent of foul-mouthed abuse on her daughter.

She allegedly hit Patel and Poonam if they dared to speak out against her.

Patel cut a tragically lonely figure as she sat in the dock throughout her trial.

Her hair conservatively pulled back in a plait and wearing glasses, she glanced nervously at the judge and barristers as she was questioned about the murder plot.

Often pausing for a long time before answering a question, which she did in barely more than a whisper, her demeanour was a far cry from the drug baron she fantasised about being.

Described by her friends as "shy" and having a "juvenile nature", she had yearned for love, marriage and children.

Before Mr Kakad she had never had a boyfriend, been intimate with a man, or even received a Valentine's Day card.

But her life was turned upside down by her quest for love - and her mother's alleged determination to scupper it.