A HUSBAND whose hatred for his estranged wife led him to try to poison her and attempt to set fire to her home while their children were asleep has been jailed for five years.

Hardev Singh, 37, of Maidstone Road, Rochester, bought his wife Sonia Boswell a Big Mac and put rat poison in it. When she bit into it, she felt pellets in her mouth.

On another occasion she was asleep downstairs at their former marital home in Grove Road, Maidstone, when she was awoken by the sound of petrol being poured through her letterbox. A match was found on the doormat .

Singh was sentenced to five years in jail at Canterbury Crown Court for attempted arson and two years to run concurrently for administering poison.

Judge Timothy Nash told him: "You may have had little time for your partner, but there were your children in this house and they could have been burned to death.”