‘Breaking Bad murder plot': Woman says mum ‘beat’ her

Kuntal Patel told the court she was controlled ‘24/7’ and not let marry her boyfriend

Kuntal Patel is charged with trying to kill her mother, Meena; Walter and Jesse plot to poison various enemies with ricin in ‘Breaking Bad’

A graphic designer accused of a Breaking Bad-inspired murder plot wept as she described how her mother beat her, controlled her “24/7” and stopped her marrying the man she loved.

Kuntal Patel, 37, is accused of trying to kill her mother, Meena, who sits on the bench at Thames Magistrates’ Court, by lacing her Diet Coke with poison in echoes of the hit US TV series that follows the story of a major drug trafficker.

Ms Patel, who once worked for Barclays Bank, is accused of plotting the murder after her mother “forbade her” from marrying Niraj Kakad, an American whom she met on an Asian dating website.

Taking the stand for the first time, she wept as she told how Meena, 60, slapped her, called her a “fucked-up brain girl” and claimed the constant family pressure made her feel like an “overweight buffalo”.

Asked by prosecutors whether she had ever watched Breaking Bad, Ms Patel told the jury: “I started from the beginning and watched one per day. I saw all of them. It was interesting. I became addicted to watching them.”

She told the court how her mother controlled her “every minute, every day” and that she felt torn between her and Kakad, whom she met on the dating website Shaadi.com.

But she claimed she was “devastated” when her mother took a dislike to her boyfriend after he travelled over to visit from his home in Arizona.

Kuntal Patel, 37, is accused of trying to poison her mother (PA)

Ms Patel said her mother labelled Mr Kakad as “an upmarket modern US man” and banned her daughter from seeing him.

Meena texted her daughter: “You want to f*** around...you are a f*****-up brain girl and you can’t be my blood,” the court heard.

Her voice barely audible, she told jurors: “I couldn’t understand how or why my mother was behaving like this. It was not the mother I had always known who loved ... me.”

Ms Patel told the court how her mother “started slapping” her “on-and-off” after deciding against her daughter’s new relationship.

In one fit of rage, Ms Patel’s mother beat and threw slippers at her two daughters, jurors heard. And, on another occasion, Meena also “strangled” Ms Patel’s younger sister when she stood up for her.

She also claimed Meena abused Mr Kakad in private, calling him “a fat black elephant” and expressing hope that he “dies and rots in hell”.

Prosecutors claim that Ms Patel bought a deadly toxin off the “Dark Net” – a discreet section of the internet favoured by criminals that does not show up in regular search engines such as Google.

The court has previously heard how the phials of poison were delivered to Ms Patel from the US in a wax candle.

Prosecutors claim Ms Patel fed the poison to her mother last December, but she survived. The package was tracked by the FBI, prompting a counter-terror operation by Scotland Yard. She had told the police her intention had been to use the toxin to kill herself.

Breaking Bad stars Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a chemistry teacher who kills another character using poison. Earlier in the trial, the court heard that Ms Patel called the man who sold her the poison “Heisenberg” – White’s alias in the programme.

Ms Patel, of Plaistow, east London, denies trying to murder her mother. She has pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to acquire a biological agent or toxin last December. The trial continues.