When a mystic smuggles himself out of India, Scully and Doggett give chase as his murderous spree starts terrorising two families in suburban Washington, D.C.

At the Sahar International Airport in Mumbai, India, an obese American businessman dismissively makes his way past a paraplegic beggar missing his legs from the knee down.

Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) arrives late to the crime scene and John Doggett (Robert Patrick) tells her that the man's blood all drained abruptly in the hotel.

Meanwhile, the beggar, somehow disguised as an ordinary-looking white man, applies for a janitorial job at a Cheverly, Maryland elementary school.

In the morgue, Scully describes the massive stomach damage done to the body which leads Doggett to the idea of drugs being forcibly cut out of him.

However, the man showed no sign of drugs in the blood tests and Scully tells Doggett that his time of death was 24 to 36 hours prior, long before he left India.

Quinton, a student at the elementary school in Cheverly, calls his father up to his room after he sees the legless beggar man at night.

While discussing the lack of any damage to the body except the broken blood vessels in the eyes, Scully comes to the conclusion that the man is still inside the latest victim.

Scully and Doggett consult Chuck Burks, an old friend of Fox Mulder's, who tells them about the fakir, ascetic masters who subject themselves to torture in order to attain enlightenment.

Struggling to see the case as Mulder might, Scully consults with Chuck again and the two discuss whether a Siddhi mystic using their powers for murder would violate the very foundation of their lives and endanger their souls.

After hearing a strange squeaking sound—the wheels of the unseen fakir's dolly—Trevor runs home, brushing past his mother in the foyer.

The fakir turns the hunt around and begins stalking the boys, eventually taking Trevor's form just as Scully arrives.

Following the shooting, Scully weeps as she realizes she was "just not capable of" viewing this particular case without prejudice, without judgment, or with an open mind as Mulder would have done.

Two weeks later at the Sahar International Airport, the fakir, unharmed, watches another American businessman with a large frame pass by.

[5] Shiban later said that "... one thing about this episode that I'm sort of proud is that people often have told me that it is the most disgusting thought that they ever had, that this little man would actually enter your body and travel around inside you.

He noted, "if you look at newsreel footage of India, they always have old English cars from the sixties, the cruise line terminal in Long Beach was perfect.

Deep Roy was a noted stunt man who had notably played Droopy McCool of the Max Rebo Band in Return of the Jedi.

[11] Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode two stars out of five.

[16][17] The UGO review, in particular, noted that the character was "One of the series' more blatant allegories [...], as a legless Indian Mystic [...] literally climbs into his victims to travel where he will.

[...] Scully and Doggett investigate the bloody goings-on [...] and a gut-wrenching climax, though not entirely successful, still opens up some thorny issues over how we view weakness, deformity, race, and 'otherness.