When a wealthy landowner leaves everything (including a treasure hidden in the mansion's dungeon) to his second son and disinherits his older son Durjan for practicing black magic, the elder son kills his brother and kidnaps his brother's two daughters to sacrifice them to bring to life a clay demon god. Their uncle interrupts the ceremony and rescues younger daughter Aarti but her terrified sister Sapna disappears into the jungle. Durjan is imprisoned in the dungeon below the mansion with the demon god's corpse and the treasure. 20 years later, the dying uncle tells grown Aarti (Arti Gupta) and her boyfriend Vijay (Puneet Issar) that the locket that Aarti wears is half of a map that will lead them to the treasure and that the other half is with the still-missing Sapna. In the meantime, Sapna (Sheetal) now a top-heavy cabaret dancer, unknowingly goes to work for her sleazy uncle Shakaal (Imtiaz Khan) who owns a club in the city and doesn't realize she's his niece or notice the locket (despite the number of times he has looked her up and down) until after he's accidentally killed her while trying to rape her. Vijay, Aarti, and pal Anaht see a picture of Sapna and ask club owner Shakaal if he has seen her and about the locket. Fortunately, Shakaal has a duplicate of Sapna's locket with the wrong directions to set Aarti and Vijay on the wrong track when he joins them at the old mansion to look for the treasure. There they are joined by a local girl Panna (Priti Sapru) and her Rambo-lookalike fiancee Heera (Hemant Birje) in search of the treasure. Little do they know that Durjan only recently sacrificed his own body to resurrect the demon god who takes out two of Shakaal's men during the initial search. When Shakaal tries to molest the housemaid, he gets himself thrown out by Vijay and Heera whose later scuffle with him leads to the discovery of the real amulet but the demon has tired of hanging out in the dungeon and starts terrorizing the village.

Going by the double billing of MAHAKAAL and TAHKHANA, once comes to the conclusion that the Ramsay family didn't like someone named Shakaal as he is the supernatural killer of the former and a sleazy rapist in the latter. While Shakaal is a sleazy rapist who molests and kills his niece and sidelines his own pursuit of the treasure to make and attempt on the housemaid getting him thrown out by the very people he is trying to dupe, some questionable behavior on behalf of the two male heroes such as switching the Aarti's and Heera's sugarcane drinks with hemp juice lead to one of the film's two musical numbers. The songs and three fight scenes adds up to about twenty five minutes of the running time with the rest devoted to the plot (the two hour running time is short by Bollywood standards). The first half of the film may be a slog for those expecting full blown horror (the intentional humor on the other hand actually works here) but once they arrive at the mansion (at around the one hour mark) the atmosphere will be very familiar to Western horror fans. The gore is stronger than the film's later co-feature and the film is not afraid to sacrifice likable characters to tragic effect (the unlikable characters get what's coming to them too) and the torch-wielding mob find that killing the monster is not so easy (even with a buff Rambo-wannabe tossing pieces of stone pillar at the creature).