It also carried a story datelined Rampura Phul in Punjab, detailing the trauma of the family of Mangat Garg, whose son Razat died after being hit by a train on the western fringes of Melbourne on the Valentine's Day.

Australian Police suggested that the hospitality management student had committed suicide but the family is alleging murder and is not satisfied with the investigation, the report said. The valuables and cash he was carrying at the time of the incident was not found on his body, Garg said.

The daily quoted a leading expert on international education, Monash University business professor Chris Nyland, as saying that there was a need for a federal advisory body on student safety. Nyland also called for mandatory statistical reporting of international student deaths.

Currently, if an overseas student dies in Australia, the education provider is not required to give a cause of death when it reports the matter to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.

A spokeswoman for Education Minister Julia Gillard said the law would be reviewed this year and next.

Opposition Immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone said she sought the data in February because foreign-student organisations suspected under-reporting of deaths. "To have 34 cited as unknown is an extraordinary statistic."