Mumbai: Nervousness gripped the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on March 7 after fresh threats of an imminent war on Iraq sent indices reeling under heavy selling pressure, pulling down the SENSEX by yet another steep 37.29 points to close at 3153.06 in line with global weakness ahead of a pivotal report by UN inspectors.

US President George W Bush said that the US would disarm Iraq by force, if necessary, even without the backing of the UN or certain allies, forced jittery operators to unload positions, dealers said.

Fall in the world markets also aided the downtrend. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index dropped by 101.61 points and 11.51 points respectively last night. South East Asian markets also encountered nervous selling. The Nikkei dipped by 225.03 points, the Singapore ST Index by 17.67 points and the Hang Seng by 55.16 points.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened lower at 3182.16 as against yesterday's close of 3190.35 and moved down further to a low of 3142.89 before concluding at 3153.06, a steep fall of 1.17 per cent. The broad-based BSE-100 dropped by 20.08 points to 1561.84 from previous close of 1581.92.

Sentiment got a further setback after the Maharashtra government hiked the stamp duty on non-delivery deals by 500 per cent from Rs 200 to Rs 1,000 per Rs 1 crore transactions effective from April 1.

According to market-men, cash and derivative segments, which contribute to nearly 85 per cent of the daily turnover would be drastically affected by the stamp duty.

PTI