Victoria police have arrested a 20-year-old man in connection with the death of the student Aiia Maasarwe in the Melbourne suburb of Bundoora.

The man was arrested in Greensborough on Friday morning in a joint operation by local police and homicide detectives, police said.

Police believe Maasarwe was attacked just after midnight on Tuesday. She was found about 50m from the tram stop on the corner of Plenty Road and Main Drive, and was on a video call to her sister when she was attacked.

The student boarded the No 86 tram home to her apartment near Latrobe University in Bundoora on Tuesday night after attending a gig at the Comics Lounge in North Melbourne.

Her father, Saeed Maasarwe, arrived in Australia on Thursday to identify her body and visited the site where his daughter was found on Friday. She was discovered at the top of a slight rise below the double-story shopping centre car park, partially concealed behind some bushes. The area is now covered in flowers.

He told reporters that he was thankful for the help and support he and his family had received from police, Latrobe university, and the broader community, and was moved to see the flowers.

“I am sad because this is the last place my daughter was, here,” he said. “I have many dreams to be with her but I cannot now ... someone decided I cannot be. I wish, I hope, I pray she is now in a more nice place, than this place, and in paradise.”

He had planned to travel to Australia at the end of the month to spent two weeks holidaying with Aiia, and told her last month she should take the time to go up to Sydney. He said she was “all the time smiling,” an opinionated, clever woman who loved to study and explore new cultures.

“Her mind was open for everything,” he said.

Before the arrest, hundreds had gathered at Latrobe University in a vigil for Maasarwe, 21, whose body was found behind a bush outside the car park to the Polaris shopping centre in Bundoora about 7am on Wednesday.

Latrobe vice chancellor John Dewar told a gathering at the university’s Bundoora campus on Friday that the university would do “everything in our power to ensure that this never happens again”.

“Women must be able to feel safe to walk in this city after dark,” he said. “We will do everything we can to make sure that that happens.”

Therapy dogs walked through the crowd. Most of those in attendance, like former Latrobe University international student Sofia Dahlgren, had not met Maasarwe but had often made the same journey after dark.

“When I was a student and I lived on campus, I walked to that supermarket many times late at night,” Dahlgren said.

Claire Lowe, 30, lives just above the area where the alleged attack took place, and said she walked past the site every morning and evening to get to work.

“One of the reasons I like this area is that it’s always so busy,” Lowe said. “I have walked home from Polaris [shopping centre] at 12.30am and it’s still busy, you feel safe.”

The Northern Centre Against Sexual Assault has set up a booth on campus and students have been given information about free counselling and security services, including after-dark escorts, available to all students and staff.

More than 1,000 people were also expected to gather for a silent vigil on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House in Melbourne on Friday evening.

Maasarwe, a Palestinian Arab of Israeli citizenship, had been in Melbourne for six months on a student exchange program and was working towards a business degree, with intentions to work with her father in China.

Instead, her father arrived in Melbourne on Thursday morning to identify her body.

Her uncle, Rame Maasarwe, told Guardian Australia the family was shocked by her death: “We thought it was very safe there in Australia.”

Police have described it as an “absolutely horrendous, horrific attack”.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, have expressed their condolences over Maasarwe’s death.

Morrison said he was “sickened” and “disturbed” by the attack.

“I know the police will do their job and they’ll deal with it,” he told reporters in Fiji. “But the rest of the country has to wake up today and deal with the most despicable of crimes … And on behalf of myself and Jenny and my family to her family, just pray you can find whatever comfort you can in the worst of all circumstances.”

Those attending the vigil on the steps of the parliament were asked to wear black and to bring flowers, particularly red roses, which would be taken along the No 86 tram to Bundoora at 8pm.

Jane Pickering, the organiser of the silent vigil, said: “I felt that fear and rage and despair and sadness, and I thought of all the other women and girls who went out to see their friends on the same night and caught the tram home on the same night and how all of us live with that fear and risk. It just feels like we can’t stop having vigils; it happens too much.”

Vigils and marches were held after the rape and murders of Eurydice Dixon in Carlton’s Princes Park last year; Masa Vukotic in 2015; and Jill Meagher in 2012.

Pickering said Maasarwe’s decision to call her sister when walking home after dark was a behaviour every woman would recognise; a safety tip as recognisable as holding keys through your fingers.

“It’s like something from a horror movie,” she said. “I think for most, the idea that that could somehow protect you is now gone.”

The Victoria police assistant commissioner Bob Hill told 3AW that patrols had been increased.

“Be concerned, but be conscious of the fact [Victoria] is a safe state, this is a safe country,” he said. “This is an isolated incident. The likelihood of you being a victim is very remote.”