Mumbai: Heavy bouts of profit-selling at higher levels pulled down the SENSEX by a whopping 47.76 points to close at 3289.55 at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on June 10, truncating the straight four- session gaining streak.

Recently favoured banking shares suffered a sharp setback following the news that government had directed Securities amd Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to probe into volatile movements in the banking stocks over the past few weeks, a dealer said.

A steep decline in 25 out of 30 index-based shares including heavyweights like RIL, Infosys Tech, ITC, SBI, HDFC, HPCL, L&T, MTNL, ICICI Bank, Ranbaxy, Telco and Tisco caused the SENSEX to end sharply weak.

Elsewhere, majority of IT counters including Infosys Tech and Satyam Computers bore the brunt of selling following negative advices from Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index dropped by 82.79 points and 23.45 points last night respectively.

A leading domestic institution was also said to be booking profits in several blue-chip stocks at higher levels.

However, power and power equipment shares like BSES, Tata Power, ABB, Siemens and Alstom Power rose on good buying.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened lower at 3332.66 and moved irregularly in a range between 3350.02 and 3281.21 before concluding at 3289.55 as against yesterday's close of 3337.31, a fall of 1.43 per cent.

The broad-based BSE-100 index also dipped by 31.24 points to end at 1666.71 from previous close of 1697.95.

PTI