  We study the effect of scalar leptoquarks in the lepton flavour violating $B$
meson decays induced by the flavour changing transitions $b \to q l_i^+ l_j^-$
with $q=s,d$. In the standard model these transitions are extremely rare as
they are either two-loop suppressed or proceed via box diagrams with tiny
neutrino masses in the loop. However, in the leptoquark model they can occur at
tree level and are expected to have significantly large branching ratios. The
leptoquark parameter space is constrained using the experimental limits on the
branching ratios of $B_q \rightarrow l^+ l^-$ processes. Using such constrained
parameter space, we predict the branching ratios of LFV semileptonic $B$ meson
decays, such as $B^+ \to K^+ (\pi^+) l_i^+ l_j^-$, $B^+ \to (K^{* +}, \rho^+)
l_i^+ l_j^-$ and $B_s \to \phi l_i^+ l_j^-$, which are found to be within the
experimental reach of LHCb and the upcoming Belle II experiments. We also
investigate the rare leptonic $K_{L, S} \to \mu^+ \mu^- (e^+ e^-)$ and $K_{L}
\to \mu^\mp e^\pm$ decays in the leptoquark model.
