Mumbai: Equities, once again, turned weak and pulled the Sensex down by 55 points at close in an otherwise erratic movements at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Apr 12, 2004) on late sell-off by domestic mutual funds as well as a large corporate house.

Heavyweighted counters like Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and Infosys Tech bore the brunt of selling pressure.

Reflecting the slide, the BSE Benchmark 30-share Index that initially had risen to the intra-day high at 5867.07, fell back during the last one hour of the session to end at 5783.79 as against last Thursday's close of 5838.45, a net fall of 54.66 points or 0.94 per cent.

Despite consistent net purchases by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) which made net investments of Rs 716 crore in the three sessions between April 5 and 7, brokers said the market failed to sustain because of profit booking by local mutual funds coupled with selective selling by corporates.

A leading corporate house was believed to have pressed sales in key PSU (Public Sector Undertaking) counters besides shares of Reliance group companies, brokers added.

FIIs net inflows were amounted to Rs 14,386 crore in the first three months of the year, including their investments in key public offers by the Government to divest its stake in some of the major companies.

The broad-based BSE-100 index moved down by 21.25 points to 3083.80 from previous close of 3105.05.

Besides RIL and Infosys Tech, key counters like Grasim, ITC, L&T, ONGC, SBI, Tisco, Tata Motors, HPCL, GACL, HDFC and HDFC Bank registered marked losses.