Twenty-five students, who were also members of the ruling Awami League's student wing, known as the Bangladesh Chhatra League, summoned Fahad to campus to explain himself.
What happened next is horrifying.
For six hours, Fahad was beaten with a cricket bat and other blunt objects before his body was dropped from a staircase of a university dormitory.
The lead-up to the savage murder was captured on CCTV footage. It showed Fahad being led through a corridor on campus to a room where he would be interrogated and, eventually, killed.
Twenty students sentenced to death by hanging
On Wednesday, Bangladesh sentenced 20 university students who took part in the murder to death.
"I am happy with the verdict," Fahad's father Barkat Ullah told reporters outside court after the sentencing.
"I hope the punishments will be served soon."
The remaining five perpetrators were handed life terms.
Death sentences are common in Bangladesh with hundreds of people on death row. All executions are by hanging — a legacy of the British colonial era.
In August, a court sentenced six Islamist extremists to death for the murders of two gay rights activists.
Sixteen people were handed the death penalty in 2019 for burning alive a 19-year-old student who accused her seminary's head teacher of sexual harassment.
All those given death sentences on Wednesday for Fahad's murder were between 20 and 22 at the time of the murder and attended the elite Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
Three of the defendants are still at large while the rest were in the courtroom. Faruque Ahmed, a lawyer for some of the defendants, said the sentence would be appealed.
'It is not fair,' killer's lawyer claims
"I am very disappointed at the verdict. It is not fair," he told AFP.
"They are young men and some of the best students of the country. They were sentenced to death despite no proper evidence against some of them."
Protests in the days after Fahad's murder called for the attackers to be harshly punished and for the Bangladesh Chhatra League to be banned.
Hasina vowed soon afterwards that the killers would get the "highest punishment".
The country's justice minister Anisul Huq said the verdict showed that "nobody will be able to walk freely after committing such crimes".
Chhtra Odhikhar Parishad, a leading student group, held a demonstration to praise the verdict and demand quick execution of the death sentences.
"The verdict is the victory of the people," said Akram Hossain, the group's general secretary.
The BCL has earned notoriety in recent years after some of its members were accused of killing, violence and extortion.
In 2018, its members allegedly used violence to suppress a major anti-government student protest.
Those rallies were sparked by anger over road safety after a student was killed by a speeding bus.
