Wednesday, May 17 2006 10:58 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The benchmark Sensex rose by a whopping 225 points to cross the 12,000 mark again in early trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange today (May 17, 2006) on the back of increased buying by funds.

The 30-share BSE index which had closed about 51 points higher at 11,873.73 in extremely volatile movements yesterday (May 16, 2006), shot up by 224.20 points to 12,097.93 in the first five minutes of trading.

Similarly, the Nifty index on the wide-based National Stock Exchange gained 60.15 points at 3583.45.

Shares of index-heaviest Reliance Industries remained the front runner with a hefty gain of Rs 29, or nearly 2.5 cent at Rs 1072.

Other major gainers were ACC, Larsen and Toubro, Grasim, Infosys Technologies, Bajaj Auto, BHEL, Tata Consultancy, ONGC, Hero Honda, ICICI Bank, Tata Steel, Tata Motors and the State Bank of India.