A YOUNG bride accused of tampering with two gas fires in the house where her mother-in-law and husband were sleeping was cleared yesterday.

On two separate occasions Asma Abid was alleged to have deliberately removed a sealant cap from the two fires in her home in Talbot Street, Middlesbrough, last June.

But yesterday Judge David Bryant directed the jury at Teesside Crown Court to acquit her of two charges of causing a noxious thing to be administered. Mrs Abid, 20, now living in East Ham, London, denied the charges.

Judge Bryant told the jury that when Mrs Abid was alleged to have allowed gas to leak from a fire on the second occasion her husband, Abid Hussain, was asleep upstairs and there was no evidence of the gas entering the room where he was.

Expert witness Ernest Avery had told the court that natural gas is not poisonous and that it would take over 100 hours, if the room was entirely sealed, to suffocate someone.

Judge Bryant said that meant the only conceivable danger to Mrs Abid's mother-in-law, Kaneez Fatima, was one of fire but there was no evidence of how much gas there was or what would have happened if a match had been lit.

The judge said he had concluded the offence was not made out.