Tuesday, May 16 2006 14:06 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: After a brief pause, the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark sensitive index continued its downward march by losing over 169 points in early trading today on sustained selling by funds.

The Sensex, which had suffered its second biggest fall of nearly 463 points yesterday, opened slightly higher at 11,861.18 points but rolled down by 169.75 points at 11,652.45 in the first five minutes of trading.

Similarly, the Nifty index on the wide-based National Stock Exchange lost 46.90 points at 3456.05.

The major losers were Hero Honda, BHEL, Dr Reddy, HDFC, Bajaj Auto, Cipla, HDFC Bank and Larsen and Toubro.

However, the market witnessed a revival of buying in cement segment stocks as most of the shares opened in positive zone.