"As on December 31, 2008, 37 cases against CBI officers were pending for departmental action for major disciplinary action and three cases entail minor penalty", a CBI spokesman said.

The country's premier investigating agency, working with nearly 20 per cent less workforce than sanctioned has over 1,000 cases which are still under investigation besides more than 9,000 cases in various stages of trial, a CBI official said.

The over 9,000 cases includes 2,228 cases which have been on trial for more than 10 years.

The agency registered 991 cases and disposed of 1,127 cases from investigation in the year 2008. There were 1004 cases under investigation at the end of last year as against 1143 cases under investigation at the end of the year 2007. A total of 642 cases were disposed of from trial during 2008.

"There were 9,112 cases on trial at the end of the year 2008 and conviction rate stood at 66.6 per cent." An analysis of figures show there has been a steady increase in cases under trial.

There were 6,898 cases in 2005, 8,293 cases in 2006, 8640 cases in 2007. This despite the fact that registration of cases during the same period had come down.