Mumbai: Reeling under consistent selling pressure, heavyweight counters, HLL, RIL and others dropped sharply pushing the SENSEX down by another 41 points at close on October 28.

A leading US based foreign fund was believed to be heavy sellers in the FMCG major HLL, which have been hammered down in the past couple of days due to lower-than- expected third quarter working by the company.

Attributing increased selling by operators as well as foreign institutional investors (FII), who were net sellers during the last week, to the flow of disappointing corporate news, brokers said speculators also reacted negatively to government's decision to expand the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) as part of measures to strengthen the market regulator.

After a promising start at 2,876.32, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) benchmark 30- share index later turned weak and gradually moved downwards to the intra-day low at 2,828.48 before ending at 2,834.41 as against last Friday's close of 2,875.53, netting a fall of 41.12 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index dipped by 18.95 points to 1,413.64 from previous close of 1,432.56.

Market sources said selling was also triggered by discouraging Quarter 2 working results by leading companies like Rolta, BSES, GSFC, Polaris Software and Madras Cement.

PTI