The mob consisting of local villagers, attacked Akhlaq's house with sticks, bricks and knives, saying that they suspected of him stealing and slaughtering a cow calf.

Later an Indian court found prima facie evidence of meat that may have been either mutton or beef, and ordered registration of a first information report (FIR) against Akhlaq.

[7] On 28 September 2015 evening, one of Akhlaq's neighbors allegedly accused him of stealing and slaughtering his missing calf at Bisahda village near NTPC Dadri in Uttar Pradesh.

Soon things took an ugly turn when two boys used the local temple's public address system and announced that the family of Akhlaq had killed the cow calf and consumed its meat on Eid-ul-Adha.

However, the mob proceeded to drag the entire family outside; Akhlaq and Danish were repeatedly kicked, hit with bricks and stabbed.

The family consisted of Akhlaq, 52; his brother Jan Mohammad Saifi, 42; mother Asgari Begum, 82; wife Ikram; son Danish, 22; and daughter Sajida.

[4][13][14] Akhlaq's elder son, Mohammad Sartaj, 27, works as a corporal-ranked technician in the Indian Air Force (IAF) and was in Chennai at the time of attack.

[19][20] On 5 October, Uttar Pradesh Police asked microblogging site Twitter to remove certain text and photographs related to the incident, which it considered provocative.

[21][22] The victim's family left Bisahda village and moved to an Indian Air Force zone in Delhi on 6 October.

[32] Asaduddin Owaisi, leader of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, criticized the police's decision to test the meat, calling this an irrelevance in light of the violent attack.

[33] Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha called the incident unfortunate and said that they were trying to move the family to an IAF area to help and protect them.

[36] After the murder of Akhlaq, BJP legislator T. Raja Singh posted on Twitter sections from the Hindu text the Vedas that allegedly mandated killing people who slaughter cows.

She pointed to the recent murders of M. M. Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, and called the Dadri lynching her last straw.

[40] On 7 October, Azam Khan, a cabinet minister in the Government of Uttar Pradesh, said that he will raise the Dadri lynching issue at United Nations.

Modi also termed undesirable the opposition to Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali's concert in Mumbai by the Shiv Sena, but sought to know how the centre was responsible for it.

[47] On 9 July 2016, judicial magistrate Vijay Kumar at the Surajpur district court (Greater Noida) issued direction under section 156 (3), on a petition filed by a Bisahda village resident against murdered Akhlaq and his kin.

On the night of 28 September 2015 police collected a sample of the meat from Akhlaq's house in Bisahda and sent it to a vet for preliminary testing.