The Sensex opened 60 points lower at 17,021, and soon slipped below the 17,000-mark to 16,975. Selective buying in morning trades saw the index rebound into positive zone and touch a high of 17,126.

The index, however, slipped back into red owing to lack of buying support at higher levels. The selling gain momentum in late noon trades and the index tumbled to a low of 16,679 - down 447 points from the high.

The Sensex finally ended with a loss of 344 points at 16,737.

Losers beat gainers in 3:1 ratio, i.e for every advancing share there were three declining stocks - out of 2,784 stocks traded, 2,017 declined, and 706 advanced on Friday.

The NSE Nifty closed points 99 lower at 4,983.

Index shakers

Jaiprakash Associates [Get Quote] tumbled 6.6% to Rs 251. Reliance plunged over 5% to Rs 2,528.

Reliance Energy [Get Quote] and ACC declined 4.5% each to Rs 1,332 and Rs 712, respectively.

HDFC Bank [Get Quote] and Hindalco [Get Quote] dropped 3.7% to Rs 1451 and Rs 174, respectively.

SBI [Get Quote], Cipla, HDFC and TCS [Get Quote] slipped around 3% each to Rs 1,676, Rs 206, Rs 2,645 and 917, respectively.

DLF, BHEL and ICICI Bank [Get Quote] shed 2% each at Rs 630, 1,725 and 874, respectively.

Larsen & Toubro, Ambuja Cements and Infosys [Get Quote] declined 1.7% each to Rs 2,836, Rs 110 and Rs 1,751, respectively.

And the movers

Bharti Airtel [Get Quote] gained 1.8% at Rs 842, and ITC advanced 1.5% to Rs 218.

Wipro [Get Quote] was the other prominent gainer at Rs 501 - up 0.8%.

Most active counters

Aishwarya Telecom led the value chart with a turnover of Rs 502.00 crore followed by Reliance Petroleum [Get Quote] (Rs 291.21 crore), Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 283.57 crore), Reliance (Rs 268.66 crore) and IFCI (Rs 173 crore).

Aishwarya Telecom, also, topped the volume chart with trades of around 5.38 crore shares followed by IFCI (2.81 crore), Ispat Industries [Get Quote] (1.57 crore), Reliance Petroleum (1.55 crore) and Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote] (1.21 crore).