Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal today said that Naxalites have a budget of Rs 60 crore for the acquisition of weapons this year. Jaiswal said this in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha.Jaiswal sourced the figure from information collected by the Jharkhand police during the interrogation of a suspected Naxalite. He said no other details in this regard are available.In reply to another question, he said Maoists have sophisticated weapons and communication systems. The extremists primarily get a substantial bulk of their weapons by looting and they also get them from illicit weapon-manufacturing units, Jaiswal said.The total number of Naxalite-related incidents increased from 1,509 in 2006 to 1,565 in 2007, he said. The number of causalities of security forces has gone up from 157 in 2006 to 236 in 2007 while the number of civilian casualties decreased from 521 to 460 in the same period.
