Mumbai: Shares failed to maintain the initial firmness on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in Mumbai on January 2 and met with heavy selling pressure from Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) and fell sharply towards the fag end, pushing down the SENSEX by 25.06 points to close at 3365.06.

FIIs, who reportedly sold shares worth Rs 40 crore on first two days of the week, continued to press heavy sales in select IT counters and old-economy heavyweights.

Heavy offloading in index-based counters like Infosys Tech, Satyam Computer, RIL, HLL, HPCL, L&T, Telco, Tisco, ICICI Bank, HCL Techno and Bajaj Auto weighed on the SENSEX.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened better at 3099.72 and crossed 3400-mark to the day's high at 3407.24.

However, higher levels attracted profit taking at the fag end that pulled down the SENSEX to a low of 3363.11 before concluding at 3365.06 as against yesterday's close of 3390.12, a fall of 0.74 per cent.

The broad-based BSE-100 index also dropped by 7.16 points to end at 1665.33 from previous close of 1672.49.

However, oil majors like BPCL, ONGC and IOC attracted good buying enquiries and closed with smart gains, but HPCL turned weak on fresh bouts of selling.

Polaris Software suffered a sharp setback on large-scale offerings by a leading foreign bank and ended sharply down by 10.90 per cent, a dealer said.

Contrary to general weak trend, media giant Zee Telefilm and banking major SBI were in keen demand notching up gains, but were not able to stem the SENSEX fall.

PTI