The student, Umam Khanam, said that some students got drunk, bought caps bearing symbols of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and, when she refused, started misbehaving with her. She said they tried to touch her in an indecent manner but the teachers did not intervene. They started pulling her and forcing her to dance on seemingly vulgar songs. They ruined her entire bus journey and, when her friends came forward for her support, the students who were drunk misbehaved with them too. She said that she was singled out for the harassment as she was the only Muslim girl in the group and had rejected to wear the BJP cap.

"Wallahi they tried to scare me but allahmdulillah i feel am more strong and this is what bjp has done to us ....So much of hatred for muslims out there...and now it has reach to such extent that students are harassing and molesting others... (sic)," she said and concluded her ordeal.

The tweets caused a sensation on social media and thousands of people, blaming the fiasco on the BJP and Islamophobia, shared it across platforms. Several news publications latched on to the viral tweets and put out reports, headlined 'UP Muslim girl harassed for not wearing BJP cap' or some variation of it.

News reached the college slowly.

Ambuj Sharma, head of department (HoD) at Dewan Law College who accompanied the group, got to know of the viral tweets only when a Twitter user named Dushyant Dubey called him up on the morning of 4 April. Dushyant had managed to find his contact and approached him to know "the other side" of the story.

Sharma told this correspondent on 8 April (Monday), "He asked me about Umam and I did not even immediately recall her name. He asked me if anything untoward happened on the bus and I said no. I had no idea what he was talking about."

Sharma then went to the principal, who escalated the matter to the institute's head — executive director Colonel (retired) Dr Naresh Goyal — who then spoke to Umam.

Goyal told this correspondent, "She looked very agitated and told me that she was sexually harassed on the tour. She took two names, Amit Kumar Singh and Ankur Verma, and said they should be rusticated immediately. Then she said okay Amit is not so guilty but please rusticate Ankur."

"I was quite upset. I have a daughter too. I told her to give a written complaint so I can forward it to the college's women grievance cell," said Goyal. In about half-an-hour, she handed over the written complaint and left.

Though Goyal did not share the complaint with this correspondent, he said she mentioned "molestation" and made a specific charge against Ankur, mentioned both the accused’s names, but did not mention the word “BJP” or "Muslim" or that she was targeted for her religious identity.

The college soon formed a four-member committee to look into her complaint and sent letters to the accused informing them of their suspension until inquiry.

"We also added a Muslim faculty into the committee after seeing her tweets," said Goyal.

A week later, the committee hasn't held a single meeting as neither the victim nor the accused or their parents have appeared before the committee for giving their statements.

There is another group, however, that has been pretty active since the suspension — about 35 students who were present on the bus that day. They recently gave a four-page hand-written statement to Goyal, signed by all 35 of them, refuting Umam's version completely and giving time-wise details of all that unfolded on the tour.