A record 385 foreign people were stripped of their resident status in 2017 as suspicious cases involving students surged, the Justice Ministry said Friday.

The figure is 31.0 percent higher than a year earlier and the highest since 2005, when comparable data became available.

With cases linked to student status doubling from a year earlier and accounting for 44.7 percent of the total, a ministry official said the overall rise in foreign students in Japan may have pushed up the figure.