Sensex clobbered, drops 246 points

The market crumbled after profit taking set in during the early trades and lingered in the negative territory all through the trading session. With the major Asian indices not recovering from their yesterday's slump further hurt the market sentiment and aggravated selling pressure in the afternoon trades. Weakness in heavyweight, consumer goods, realty and IT stocks dragged the index to the day's low of 17,258, down 566 points from its last close. The Sensex finally signed off the session with losses of 246 points at 17,579. The Nifty dropped 62 points to close at 5,223.

Dragging down the markets, Infosys dropped 3.29% at Rs1,547, Larsen & Toubro tumbled 3.24% at Rs3,523, RIL faltered 3.09% at Rs2,458, DLF slumped 3.08% at Rs781, Tisco shed 2.69% at Rs802, Wipro lost 2.64% at Rs434.65 and ONGC declined 2.58% at Rs1,012.35. However, select blue chip counters managed to clock decent gains. Maruti rose 3.86% at Rs867.20, SBI moved up by 3.48% at Rs2,109.70, Hind Utilities jumped 3.27% at Rs227.35, Bajaj Auto added 2.73% at Rs2,280.15, M&M advanced 1.86% at Rs692.80 and HDFC jumped 1% at Rs2,808.

Except BSE Auto, BSE Bankex, BSE FMCG and BSE HC index, rest of the sectoral indices ended in the red. BSE CG, BSE Realty, BSE IT, BSE Teck, BSE Power and BSE CD index dropped over 2%, while other indices were down around 1% each. However, Auto stocks attracted strong buying support. Ashok LeyLand soared 4.17% at Rs37.45, Maruti advanced 3.86% at Rs867, Bajaj Auto scaled 2.73% at Rs2,280 and Hero Honda, M&M, Amtek, Escorts and TVS Motor gained over 0.5-2% each.

Over 3.58 crore Nagarjuna Fertilisers shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RPL (1.92 crore shares), IFCI (1.72 crore shares), Chambal Fertilisers (1.49 crore shares) and RNRL (1.33 crore shares).