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Sensex drops 156 points

A weaker Indian rupee, the continual sell-off by Foreign Institutional Investors and speculative selling by bull operators in the index-based scrips today pushed down the Bombay Stock Exchange sensitive index below the 3400 mark, sending the index down by 156 points to 3311.41 in a single trading session.

Leading brokers also attributed the BSE's fall to the alleged sell-off by former big bull Harshad Mehta in select scrips like BPL, Videocon International and Sterlite. According to market sources, the payment crisis faced by Mehta and his group was also a reason for the slide in the share prices.

Meanwhile, the foreign funds continued their selling spree in the heavyweights. The fall of the rupee against the dollar also had a major impact on the bearish market, traders said.

Leading domestic institutional investors Unit Trust of India, Life Insurance Corporation of India and General Insurance Corporation made small to moderate purchases in select scrips. However, it could not halt the fall in the sensex, market sources said.

The sensex opened at 3451.17 points (day's high), immediately fell below the psychological barrier of 3400 mark to touch the day's low of 3308.05 points and finally ending up at 3311.41 points against the previous close of 3468.07 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index slumped by 68.58 points to 1457.13 points against the previous close of 1525.71 points. The BSE-200 and dollex indices closed lower by 15.34 and 6.05 points against the previous close of 346.93 and 137.03 points respectively.

Leading scrips like cement giant ACC tumbled by Rs 145.75 to Rs 1314.25, Bajaj Auto dropped by Rs 18 to Rs 548, Hindustan Lever fell sharply by Rs 40.5 to Rs 1545.25, market leader ITC drifted lower by Rs 36.25 to Rs 610.75, textile and petrochemical giant Reliance Industries declined by Rs 7.60 to Rs 148.90, State Bank of India slid from Rs 11.50 to Rs 191.10, steel leader TISCO closed lower by Rs 9.10 at Rs 135.60 and TELCO moved down by Rs 12.10 to Rs 193.80.

The total turnover on the screen-based trading system was Rs 10.8 billion.

ITC topped the list in turnover, registering the highest business volume of Rs 2.65 billion, followed by Satyam Computer Rs 1.61 billion, State Bank of India Rs 755.7 million, Reliance Rs 681.8 million and Tata Tea Rs 376.2 million.

Hectic activity was observed at the other counters like ACC (Rs 376.1 million), L and T (Rs 339.7 million), Pentafour (Rs 312.7 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 307.5 million), TISCO (Rs 277.1 million), Hind Lever (Rs 245.7 million), Castrol (Rs 239.1 million), NIIT (Rs 193 million), Infosys (Rs 157.2 million) and MTNL (Rs 138.0 million).

UNI