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A man has killed his wife in India after claiming she ‘spent days and nights’ on Facebook and WhatsApp while ignoring her family.

The man, known only as Hariom, strangled 32-year-old Luxmi to death while she slept in their flat in Gurgaon, a city near Delhi.

Her father found Hariom sitting next to his daughter’s lifeless body before he phoned police.

When he was arrested on Friday, Hariom, 35, said he bought his wife a smartphone a few years after their marriage in 2006.

After that, he said, Luxmi began to spend hours on the phone chatting to people on social media and messaging apps.

According to The Times of India, he told police: ‘All was fine for the first few years and then I got her a smartphone. In the past two years, the phone gradually changed her and she started ignoring me and the children.

‘It seemed that the children and I had ceased to exist for her. She would not cook meals or do any household chore – she would not take the kids to school or help them do homework.

‘She spent days and nights on Facebook and WhatsApp.’

He said he thought at first that she would ‘soon get bored’ with the phone but instead ‘things only got worse’.

They fought every day and the children were put ‘under stress’, he added.

When he sent their two children – an eight-year-old girl and a ten-year-old boy – to boarding school because of the alleged negligence of his wife, he said her addiction worsened again.