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Sensex plunges 77.5 points

However, foreign institutional investors continued with their buying spree which halted the heavy downfall in the share prices. The FIIs bought considerable amount of sidelined equities including Larsen and Toubro, Bajaj Auto and Tata Tea, leading brokers said.

Reflecting the downtrend, the BSE Sensitive index opened nearly steady at 4145.60 points, remained at the same level for quiet some time. Later, bull operators and domestic institutions entered and booked profits, making the Sensex crash to 4045.96 points.

At the fag end, local institutions purchased limelight share and lifted the Sensex up to 4069.79 points, suffering a loss of 77.50 points as against the previous close of 4147.29 points.

The broadbased BSE National index dropped below 1800 mark and finished at 1792.90 points, losing 33.91 points over the previous close of 1826.81 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices declined by 08.03 and 03.53 points to 406.90 and 170.30 points as compared to last trading day's close of 414.93 and 173.83 points respectively.

Marketmen said that bull operators and financial institutions were booking profits, particularly at software, Reliance Industries Limited and ITC counters.

With tomorrow being a holiday, most bull operators were booking profits to square up their positions, while local institutions were booking profits at higher and purchasing shares at lower level, brokers added.

The total turnover was Rs 12.56 billion involving 50.9 million shares in 149,104 trades. Out of 7,012 scrips, a total number of 1,801 scrips were traded.

ITC recorded the highest turnover of Rs 1.8 billion, Satyam Comp Rs 852.4 million, ACC Rs 703.5 million, SBI Rs 605.9 million, Castrol Ind Rs 530 million, Tata Tea Rs 502.8 million, Pentafour Software Rs 498.9 million, Reliance Rs 467.4 million, Nestle Rs 400.5 million, NIIT Rs 307.1 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 301.8 million, ICICI Rs 267.9 million, Hind Lever Rs 245.4 million, L and T Rs 227.6 million, Zee Telefilm Rs 223.6 million in the specified counters.

Among other active scrips were IPCA Labs (Rs 126.9 million), Tata Infotec (Rs 44.2 million), BFL Infotec (Rs 41.3 million), DSQ Software (Rs 20.1 million), Him Fut Comm (Rs 19.3 million), Bata India (Rs 17.6 million), Software Sol (Rs 17.5 million), Cyber System (Rs 17.1 million), Marico Indus (Rs 16.6 million), Otis Elev (Rs 13.9 million), Leading Edge (Rs 12.7 million), Reliance Pet (Rs 1.2 million), Aptech Limited (Rs 11.7 million), Silverline (Rs 11.1 million) and Maaar Software (Rs 10.9 million) at the 'B1' counters.

UNI