A wife has been arrested after allegedly killing 15 of her in-laws in a botched bid to poison the man she had been ordered to marry in .

Aasia Bibi, from Muzaffargarh in the southwestern Punjab province of Pakistan, was forced to marry Amjad Akram against her will in September.

Two months into the unhappy marriage, the  21-year-old bride, who was allegedly in love with another man, hatched a plot to kill her 25-year-old husband by poisoning his glass of milk.

But Amjad did not consume the drink and Aasia's mother-in-law unwittingly used the tainted liquid to make Lassi - a popular traditional yogurt-based drink in the Indian Subcontinent.

This was then served to 27 of Amjad's family members who, after drinking it, started to show symptoms of poisoning.

She said: 'Shahid told me to poison the beverage but I didn't do it. He asked me to marry him but I refused.'

Although Pakistan recently strengthened laws designed to prevent child marriage and forced conversion, there is little legal remedy for women who reject a partner chosen for them by their family.

Pakistan accounted for the highest number of forced marriages reported to the UK's Forced Marriage Unit in 2016.

Incidents of poisoning are common in the Punjab, where marrying out of choice remains an anomaly.

Last month a newly-married couple were poisoned for unknown reasons by the family of the bride.

Source: Daily Mail