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INDIA

India

MacGyver had traveled to India on a mission to intercept plans for a guerrilla raid. Anxious to get out of the country quickly, he had missed his train to Rajmir, but he managed to catch up with it by following in a speeding taxi and convincing the engineer to slow down enough for him to climb on board while the train was in motion. Aboard the train, MacGyver met his fellow passengers including Andrea Collins, a courier for the US State Department, Andy Ellis and Laura Dillion, Americans who had recently met and had begun a relationship, James Grant, a British surgeon who had recently lost his right arm in an accident, Diana Kingman, a meek American young woman travelling with her domineering mother Eleanor, Peter Kramer, a mysterious European traveling alone, Paul Webster, an American, Lyman and Blade, who wore the uniform of a conductor, Batu Das, the engineer, and a little Indian girl whom MacGyver entertained by making a doll from a stuffed handkerchief.

Hassan, a leader from a nearby village, had organized his followers, including Badur, to hijack the train by setting explosives to destroy a trestle bridge and forcing it to stop. Hassan explained that he came from a poor village that had struggled to build a clinic to improve the lives of the residents. However, when they had bought medicines in Chattur from two Western businessmen for a great deal of money paid in gold, the medicine turned out to be poisoned, and 26 of his people had died. The businessmen had boarded the train, but because Hassan did not know their identities, he announced that all Westerners aboard the train would be held hostage without food or water until they themselves identified the two men and turned them over to face justice by taking the very medicines they had sold.

Although several of the passengers felt compassion for Hassan's situation, tensions mounted and suspicions shifted until MacGyver fashioned a makeshift lie detector using Dr. Grant's sphygmomanometer and an alarm clock. Once attached to the device, Paul Webster was unable to respond truthfully, and he set off the alarm, revealing as he did so that his partner was Blade and that they had been responsible for the tainted drugs. Webster attempted to escape by restarting the train engine, but MacGyver had previously booby-trapped the control panel circuits to overload, and despite MacGyver's warnings, Webster threw the switch and received a fatal electric shock. Blade was forced to return Hassan's gold, and he was taken into custody to face trial in Rajmir. As the passengers returned to the train and were allowed to continue their journey by another route, Hassan made an offer to James Grant to remain and to help rebuild the clinic, an offer which the doctor cautiously accepted when Diana Kingman offered to stay behind and help him.

Cross Reference: Badur, Batu Das, Blade, Andrea Collins, Laura Dillon, Andy Ellis, James Grant, Hassan, Diana Kingman, Eleanor Kingman, Peter Kramer, Lyman, Paul Webster

Episode Reference: Slow Death