The Indian equity benchmarks snapped their three-day winning streak on Friday dragged by losses in Reliance Industries after the Supreme Court ruled that an arbitration order stopping Future Retail's sale of assets to the conglomerate was valid.
Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy committee kept interest rates steady at record lows on Friday as expected.
The Sensex fell as much as 423 points from day's highest level and Nifty 50 index dropped below important psychological level of 16,250.The Sensex ended 215 points lower at 54,277.72 and Nifty 50 index declined 56 points to close at 16,238.20.Shares of Reliance Industries fell as much as 2.54 per cent to hit an intraday low of Rs 2,079 on the BSE after the Supreme Court on Friday said Reliance Retail cannot go ahead with its $3.4 billion deal to buy Future Groups retail assets.Rate sensitive banking, financial services and realty shares witnessed a mild selling pressure on account of profit boking after the Reserve Bank of India kept repo rate unchanged at record low.Cipla was top Nifty loser, the stock rose 3.5 per cent to Rs 912.
Shree Cements, UltraTech Cement, Tata Steel, HDFC, Larsen - Toubro, HCL Technologies, State Bank of India, JSW Steel and Nestle India were also among the losers.On the flipside, IndusInd Bank, Adani Ports, Indian Oil, Tech Mahindra, Tata Consumer Products, Bharti Airtel, SBI Life, NTPC and Maruti Suzuki were among the losers.Glenmark Life Sciences closed 4 per cent higher in its debut in the Mumbai market after its initial public offering was oversubscribed 44 times.The overall market breadth was positive as 1,822 shares ended higher while 1,389 closed lower on the BSE.