Mumbai: The SENSEX plummeted by 59.39 points to breach the 3000 psychological barrier on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on August 8 and closed at a 10-month low of 2950.09 as a large number of old economy heavyweights met with heavy selling by local funds.

Cash-strapped local funds were believed to have sold large chunk of shares of RIL, HLL, ITC, Telco, Tisco and few others, affecting the market sentiment very badly, a leading dealer said.

Shares of Tata group companies were the worst hit by institutional selling following DCA indicating possibility of probing Tata Finance Ltd to determine if there were any financial irregularities.

A leading foreign fund was also said to be seller in select software as well as old-economy counters that added fuel to the fire, dealers said.

The initial firmness in software stocks following a sharp rally in Dow Jones Industrial Average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index was short-lived as sellers became active and pulled prices down later.

Majority of second-rung software scrips suffered a heavy setback on selling by operators and finished with losses.

Mirroring the trend, the BSE-30 share sensitive index resumed higher at 3014.68 and after touching a high of 3019.49, met with strong resistance and dropped to a low of 2945.50 before closing at 2950.09, a steep fall of 1.97 per cent over August 7 close of 3009.48.

The BSE-100 index also dipped by 27.83 points to 1493.59 from previous close of 1521.42.

PTI