“Badlaa” is episode nine of season eight of The X-Files.
What looks to be a very large American businessman arrives at the airport in Mumbai, heading out. He hears a squeak and turns to see a beggar with no legs on a cart. The man gives the beggar some money. When the man leaves, the beggar dumps the money on the floor. The man hears the squeak again from a toilet cubicle and stands as the beggar gets closer. Then he’s dragged out from the stall.
The man arrives at a hotel in Washington and the bellman opens the door of his room, trying to make conversation, to no avail. When the bellman leaves, the man sits on the bed. Blood starts to trickle down and his eyes fill with blood.
Scully arrives at the hotel room; Doggett is already there. She hasn’t had a chance to view the case file. Doggett fills her in; something killed the man but it wasn’t disease or poison. The maid found him 20 minutes after the bellman left. No-one knows anything. He guesses that’s why it’s in Scully’s inbox. There’s also something the cops missed the first time around. A small handprint; it looks like a child. Scully doubts whatever did this was a child. Doggett is relieved.
A man is applying for a job as a maintenance engineer at Fairmont Elementary School. The woman interviewing him sees someone very different to who’s sat there; it’s the beggar.
Doggett arrives at the morgue where Scully has the victim’s body. He thinks they can rule out his ex-wives. Scully agrees; she’s found tissue damage to the lower intestine and rectal wall. There’s too much damage to tell if it was something going in or out. An MRI shows further damage. Doggett suggests the man was transporting drugs and somebody forcibly extracted them. A good theory, but there would be traces of drugs and it doesn’t account for the blood loss. Scully has also run some tests to determine time of death. She says these are not 100% accurate, but they’re good enough. And the range is 24-36 hours. Which means he died before he left Mumbai.
At the school, one kid is tackled by three older ones who take his scooter until the boy’s father intervenes. He tells them to pick on someone their own age. The maintenance engineer- the beggar – is watching as they leave.
Scully arrives at her office to find Doggett on the phone. He’s been speaking to the consulate in New Delhi. Three weeks ago, an American businessman was found dead in a hotel room. The records are in multiple languages, but Doggett has a translation of the autopsy. Scully notices that there’s a 33-pound discrepancy between the man’s passport weight and the weight two hours after death. Doggett says people lie about their weight. That’s a big lie, though. Both individuals were large. Scully ponders that something small with hands was living inside the victims. Doggett is not convinced.
The boy from earlier, Quinton, is in bed when he’s woken by a squeaking sound. He sees the beggar and calls for his father. His father comes in and reassures him that there’s nothing there. Which appears to be true. The father heads downstairs and sits down. The beggar is behind him. Quinton hears his father scream and comes down to find him dead with bloody eyes.
Scully speaks to Quinton and tells Doggett that the boy said he saw a munchkin with no legs in his room. Doggett has found palmprints; they match the one from the hotel room. One was on the sill outside the locked bedroom window. Scully has a problem with the father; the only thing that matches the other two victims is the bloody eyes. Then wonders if it’s the first stage. She heads to the morgue to find the man’s stomach vastly bloated.
The beggar is killing people and climbing inside them – or killing them by climbing inside them – and seems able to stop people from seeing him. Which makes him very difficult to find. He also seems to be killing randomly. Scully is also having problems trying to be Mulder.