Mumbai, March 23 -- Equity benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty plummeted on Monday, in tandem with an extremely weak trend in global markets as the war in the Middle East showed no signs of a slowdown.

Rising crude oil prices due to the war, which has entered its fourth week, relentless foreign fund outflows and weakness in the rupee have also made investors risk-averse.

The 30-share BSE Sensex dived 1,836.57 points, or 2.46 per cent, to settle at 72,696.39. During the day, it plunged 1,974.52 points, or 2.64 per cent, to 72,558.44.

The 50-share NSE Nifty tanked 601.85 points, or 2.60 per cent, to end at 22,512.65.

From the 30-Sensex firms, Titan tumbled the most by 6.24 per cent. Trent, UltraTech Cement, Bharat Electronics, InterGlobe Aviation, Tata Steel, and HDFC Bank were also among the major laggards.

HCL Tech, Power Grid, Infosys, and Tech Mahindra were the winners.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, jumped 0.97 per cent to $113.3 per barrel.

The BSE MidCap Select index tanked 3.82 per cent, and the SmallCap Select index plunged 3.66 per cent.

All sectoral indices ended lower. Consumer durables tumbled 4.91 per cent, metal (4.76 per cent), realty (4.75 per cent), services (4.70 per cent), BSE PSU Bank (4.39 per cent), MidSmall Private Banks Quality Tilt (4.37 per cent), commodities (4.35 per cent), industrials (4.05 per cent) and capital goods (3.99 per cent).

A total of 3,798 stocks declined while 635 advanced and 123 remained unchanged on the BSE.

Since the conflict began, the BSE benchmark Sensex has tumbled 8,590.8 points or 10.56 per cent, and the NSE Nifty lost 2,666 points or 10.58 per cent.

The market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies eroded by Rs 48.29 lakh crore (Rs 48,29,041.45 crore) to Rs 415 lakh crore (Rs 4,15,21,629.82 crore) since then.

FIIs offloaded equities worth Rs 5,518.39 crore on Friday, according to exchange data. Domestic Institutional Investors (DIIs), however, bought stocks worth Rs 5,706.23 crore. Foreign investors have pulled out Rs 88,180 crore (about $9.6 billion) from Indian equities so far this month.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.