MEERUT, May 26 -- In a dramatic twist, Moradabad police have uncovered a major gold smuggling racket after rescuing six abducted individuals, four of whom were later found to have gold hidden in their stomachs, authorities said. The individuals, who had returned from Saudi Arabia, were abducted by armed criminals posing as policemen on Friday evening. Talking to HT, Meerut senior superintendent of police (SSP) Satpal Antil said, "So far 27 capsules weighing around 950 grams have been extracted from the stomachs of four Saudi returnees. Medical teams are still working to find more gold capsules which were swallowed for the purpose of smuggling." "Police teams are conducting a detailed investigation. Links of the smugglers are being identified to trace the larger smuggling nexus. We are also trying to ascertain whether these individuals had been involved in similar activities in the past. The customs department has been alerted," the SSP said. The case came to light on Friday evening when six armed criminals travelling in two vehicles intercepted a car near the old toll plaza on the Delhi-Lucknow highway in Moradabad. The vehicle was carrying six men who had just landed in Delhi from Saudi Arabia, along with their driver. One of the abductors was wearing a police uniform, and an inspector's cap was also kept inside the car. They stopped the vehicle under the pretext of a security check and then held all seven individuals hostage at the gun-point before taking them to the nearby forest area of Raunda in the Mundhan Pandey region. The abductors reportedly had prior information that the returnees were smuggling gold in their stomachs. As the abductors prepared to cut open the victims' stomachs to retrieve the gold, one of the hostages, car driver Zulfikar, managed to escape and raised an alarm in a nearby village. The local police acted swiftly, launching a rescue operation. When confronted, the abductors opened fire, prompting retaliatory action from the police. Two of the abductors -- Taufiq alias Tufail from Rampur Doraha (Katghar), and Raja alias Raza Chaudhary from Islam Nagar in Uttarakhand's Udham Singh Nagar district -- were shot in the leg and apprehended, police said. Four other suspects managed to flee, while all seven hostages were rescued unharmed. The police brought the six Saudi returnees to the Mundha Pandey CHC for an ultrasound to verify the gold smuggling suspicion. However, the attending doctor denied finding any foreign substance and hesitated to refer the men to the district hospital, arousing further suspicion, a police officer said. The police then had them examined at a private diagnostic lab. The ultrasound reports confirmed that four of them --- Azharuddin, Zulfikar, Mutallavi, and Shahn Alam -- had gold hidden inside their stomachs, while two others, Mohammad Naved and Zahid Ali, were found clean, police said, adding subsequent scans at the district hospital confirmed the presence of gold in their stomachs. Superintendent of police (city) Kumar Ranvijay Singh said: "All six individuals were residents of Tanda in Rampur district and had been employed in Saudi Arabia. The group had landed in Delhi on Friday and was en route to their hometown when abducted." "Each of the gold capsule swallowed by the smugglers weighs around 35 grams. Initial investigation has revealed that they are part of a gold smuggling syndicate. Efforts are underway to track down the remaining culprits," he said, adding police are tracing the source of the tip-off the abductors acted on....