London: A perfectionist mother poisoned herself and her two daughters with acid, an inquest heard on Saturday.

Heena Solanki, 34, may have killed her children before committing suicide because she `hated’ her father-in-law.

The lab technician had been living at her in-laws’ house with her husband, Kalpesh, and their daughters Jasmine, nine, and four-year-old Prisha, the hearing was told.

Solanki had forced her two girls to drink the poison phenyl, which she had taken from her workplace, and had strangled them before taking the poison herself and wrapping a cord around her neck, West London Coroner’s Court heard. Solanki was a perfectionist who pressured her two daughters to be top of their classes, the hearing was told.

Kalpesh, 43, found the bodies in the master bedroom of the house in West Ruislip, North-West London, when he returned from work at 6.40pm on April 12 last year.

He told the hearing: `Before her death, I believed her to be happy and content with her life and her children.

`The only source of worry was that we lived with my parents as she did not get on well with my father. But we had decided to move house and had been looking at houses, and we were going to tell my parents when they returned from holiday.

`This was the only thing that upset her. She did not suffer from depression or mental health problems. She never expressed a wish to die or harm herself in any way. There was no indication she would do this to herself or her children.’

The inquest heard that Solanki had no history of mental illness or depression although she had briefly been prescribed an antidepressant in 2010 and 2011 after complaining of severe headaches.

Her friend, Branali Chambare, whose son attended the same school as Jasmine, told the court: `Her relationship with her father-in-law was a bit problematic. She used to tell me she hated him. She would cry and say there were problems at home.

`She told me about arguments with herself and her husband and said one day she would leave Kalpesh and go back to India with her children — this was the thing she used to say: harming, suicide never. They were a happy family. I’ve never seen her depressed.’

Chambare said Solanki was a perfectionist who had high standards for her children and that alienated her from her husband and his parents.

`She pressured her children, she was strong and she wanted her children to be at the top of their classes,’ she added. `She would say, “I want my children to be like that and that’s it”.’

Detective Sergeant Simon Rodgers said when police first arrived at the scene they had been `overcome with fumes’ and had to wait until the room had been decontaminated before beginning the investigation.

Neighbours were told to shut their windows and doors amid fears of a `chemical incident’.

DS Rodgers added: `There was no evidence of third party involvement and there was a suicide note.’

A post-mortem examination by Dr Ashley Fegan-Earl showed all three victims had internal damage consistent with poisoning.

Coroner Chinyere Inyama recorded a verdict of suicide on Solanki, and ruled that her daughters had been unlawfully killed.