The Sensex opened a tad lower (10 points) at 14,219, and weakness in early trades saw the index drift deeper into negative zone.

Unabated selling in Cipla, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, Reliance, SBI, and Tata Steel saw the index slide to a low of 13,885 -- down 344 points from its previous close.

The Sensex finally settled with a significant loss of 320 points (down 2.2%) at 13,909. The index thus ended the week on a flat note - up 12 points - after soaring to a mid-week high of 14,384. The NSE Nifty ended at 4,084, down 94 points.

The BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices slipped 1% each to 5733 and 6941, respectively, on Friday.

The Healthcare index plunged 4% to 3696. The Oil & Gas index dropped 3% to 7078. The Bankex and Metal index shed 2.3% each to 7087 and 9726, respectively.

Declines beat advances 2:1 - out of 2,573 stocks traded, 1,705 declined, 803 advanced and 65 were unchanged on Friday.

Big Boys 'Break' Down

Bharti Airtel, SBI and Tata Steel tumbled over 4% each to Rs 826, Rs 1,099 and Rs 538, respectively.

Reliance shed nearly 4% (Rs 59) to Rs 1,538. ONGC, Grasim, ICICI Bank, HDFC and Reliance Communications shed around 3% each to Rs 929, Rs 934, Rs 2,421, Rs 1,686 and Rs 460, respectively.

HLL and Tata Motors plunged 2.5% each to Rs 210 and Rs 749, respectively.

Cipla slumped over 14% (Rs 36) to Rs 217 on the back of lower-than-expected earnings growth.

Satyam, however, advanced 1.5% to Rs 467.

Busy Counters

Reliance topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 187.55 crore followed by Cipla (Rs 144.70 crore), Indiabulls Real Estate (Rs 116 crore), Orbit Corp (Rs 111.20 crore) and Bharti (Rs 82.50 crore).

IFCI led the volume chart with trades of around 2.07 crore shares followed by Tata Teleservices (1.02 crore), Cipla (66.62 lakh), Orbit Corp (59.81 lakh) and Reliance Natural Resources (41.83 lakh).