DUBAI, Sept 25: An Indian man slit the throats of his wife and four children, the youngest an 8-month-old baby, before killing himself in the Gulf emirate of Sharjah, a UAE newspaper said on Sunday. Gulf News said the 38-year-old engineer used to work for a consultancy company in the Gulf’s trade hub Dubai but had recently called his family in Hyderabad to say he did not want to live in the United Arab Emirates any more.

Police are investigating the crime, one of the most gruesome in this conservative Gulf Arab state, the newspaper said.

Millions of expatriates, mainly from the Indian subcontinent, live and work in the energy-rich UAE, a federation of seven emirates that include Dubai and Sharjah.

Many middle-income workers, who came to the UAE seeking an affordable high standard of living, are now feeling the pinch of spiralling costs in the Gulf state, where rents have risen by about 50 per cent in a year and salaries have lagged behind, causing severe hardships to expatriates living there.—AFP