A woman in Brazil has been arrested after she fed an arsenic-laced Christmas cake to her family, poisoning many relatives.

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Police said that three women died and three other relatives fell ill after eating the cake during a family get-together on December 23 in the town of Torres.

Who is the accused woman?

Though the identity of the accused woman has not yet been revealed, Brazilian media reported that she was the daughter-in-law of the woman who prepared the cake.

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Expert analyses found high levels of arsenic, a naturally occurring and extremely toxic element, in the victims' blood, the remaining slices of cake, and the flour used to bake it.

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Forensic police director of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, Marguet Mittman, said on Monday that very high concentrations of arsenic were found in the three victims who died.

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"To give an idea, 35 micrograms are enough to cause the death of a person. In one of the victims there was a concentration 350 times higher," Mittman said.

'Cake had a spicy and unpleasant flavour'

Addressing a press conference, the police official in charge of the investigation, Marcos Veloso said that there was strong evidence incriminating the accused woman who was arrested.

Veloso said the family members had noticed a "spicy" and "unpleasant" flavour in the cake. The woman who baked the cake asked them to stop eating it, but it was too late.

As for the motive behind poisoning the cake, the police official pointed out that the family had a "very harmonious" relationship but with long-standing differences that could explain the origin of the crime.

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Meanwhile, news agency AFP reported that the police also requested the exhumation of the body of the late husband of the woman who prepared the cake.

The man's death in September last year was attributed to food poisoning and was not probed. 

(With inputs from agencies)