The index touched a day's high of 15,088 due to fresh buying in healthcare stocks.
Unabated selling in IT, banking, consumer durables and realty stocks pushed the index into a negative zone and touched a day's low of 14,645 - down 443 points from today's high.
The index recovered smartly in late noon deals and finally ended with a loss of 177 points at 14,889.
The market breadth was negative - out of 2,699 stocks traded, 1,667 declined, 964 advanced and 68 were unchanged.
The NSE Nifty ended with a loss of 51 points at 4,450.
INDEX SHAKERS...
HDFC plunged 4.8% to Rs 2,207, while ONGC tumbled 4.7% to Rs 873. HDFC Bank declined 4.5% to Rs 1,184.
TCS slipped 3.9% to Rs 916 and Jaiprakash Associates lost 3.5% to Rs 184. Infosys dropped around 3% at Rs 1,904.
Satyam was down 2.8% to Rs 491. ITC and Reliance Infrastructure declined 2.6% each at Rs 207 and Rs 1,038, respectively.
ICICI Bank, Wipro and SBI were the other major losers.
...AND THE MOVERS
Ranbaxy surged 6.5% to Rs 526, Cipla gained 2.1% at Rs 206.
Reliance moved up 1.7% at Rs 2,163. HUL advanced over 1% at Rs 232.
Maruti added 0.8% to Rs 736. ACC, BHEL and Hindalco were up 0.5% each at Rs 613, Rs 1,375 and Rs 176, respectively.
MOST ACTIVE COUNTERS
Reliance led the value chart with a turnover of Rs 281.98 crore followed by Reliance Capital (Rs 261.73 crore), Reliance Petroleum (Rs 231.74 crore), Ranbaxy (Rs 213.44 crore) and Anu Labs (Rs 167.13 crore).
IFCI topped the volume chart with trades of around 1.85 crore shares followed by Reliance Petroleum (1.36 crore), Ispat Industries (1.34 crore), Reliance Natural Resources(1.31 crore) and Spice Telecom(1 crore).
