A 3-year-old boy has died after his father allegedly put him in a washing machine and switched it on as a punishment.

Christophe Champenois, 33, is accused of bundling his little son Bastien's naked body into the machine at the family home near Paris and running a cold wash cycle, according to the Sun.

Bastien was supposedly punished for flushing his classmate's drawings in the toilet at a play group. The boy's mother Charlene, 25, took him out and rushed his limp body to their neighbour's house, claiming that the boy fell from the stairs.

"I took him in my arms like a broken doll. I felt the last beat of his heart. Charlene didn't move. She was red all over. She didn't understand he was dead," her neighbour Alice said.

The parents stuck to their story of the staircase fall, but their 5-year-old daughter revealed that her brother was put inside the washing machine.

She also said Bastien was sometimes locked inside the closet for around two hours.

Christopher was charged with the murder of a minor. And Charlene was charged for not preventing a crime and not assisting a person in danger.