New Delhi, Mar 7 (IANS); Nine officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) have been awarded the "Union Home Ministers Medal for Excellence in Investigation for 2018", the probe agency said on Thursday.

CBI's six Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) rank officers and three Inspectors have been honoured with the award. Of the six DSPs, five are deployed in Delhi and one in Bengaluru.

The CBI officers selected by the Home Ministry in the first year of the initiation of this award included DSPs Velladurai Navaraju (Bengaluru), Seema Pahuja (New Delhi), Roshan Lal Yadav (New Delhi), Ramavtar Yadav (New Delhi), Rajesh Kumar (New Delhi), K. Pradeep Kumar (New Delhi), and Inspectors Chandrakant Vithal Pujari (Mumbai), Girish Kumar Pradhan (Bhubaneswar) and Raman Kumar Shukla (New Delhi).

The nine CBI sleuths were among the 101 police officers from across the country who were awarded.

"The objective of this award is to promote high professionalism standards of investigation in the state police and the central investigating agencies and to recognise excellence in investigation by the investigating officers of the police organisations," a CBI statement said.