The Sensex opened 49 points lower at 17,441. Some buying in opening trades saw the index spurt to a high of 17,502. The index, however, could not hold gains and soon slipped back into the negative zone.

Unabated selling in the market saw the index tumble to a low of 17,238 - down 264 points from the day's high. The Sensex recovered partially and finally ended with a loss of 118 points at 17,373.

The market breadth was fairly negative - out of 2,753 stocks traded, 1,711 declined, 975 advanced and 67 were unchanged on Tuesday.

The NSE Nifty shed 48 points to end at 5,145.

Index shakers

Bharti Airtel [Get Quote] and DLF slumped 5.3% each to Rs 847 and Rs 668, respectively.

Jaiprakash Associates [Get Quote] and Reliance Energy [Get Quote] tumbled around 5% each to Rs 272 and Rs 1,442, respectively.

BHEL has plunged 2.5% at Rs 1,860. Larsen & Toubro, Maruti [Get Quote] and ACC slipped over 2% each to Rs 3,061, Rs 767 and Rs 741, respectively.

Mahindra & Mahindra and Reliance Communications [Get Quote] dropped 2% each to Rs 664 and Rs 543, respectively.

SBI [Get Quote] and NTPC declined 1.3% each to Rs 1,756 and Rs 196, respectively. Grasim [Get Quote] was, also, down over 1% at Rs 2,357.

And the movers

Satyam [Get Quote] and ITC surged 2% each to Rs 497 and Rs 225, respectively.

Infosys [Get Quote], Tata Steel [Get Quote] and Wipro [Get Quote] moved up 1.8% each to Rs 1,820, Rs 816 and Rs 498, respectively.

TCS [Get Quote] gained 1.5% at Rs 938.

Value and volume toppers

Titagarh Wagons topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 263.30 crore followed by Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 236.40 crore), Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote] (Rs 210.90 crore), Reliance Petroleum [Get Quote] (Rs 204.40 crore) and Bharti Airtel (Rs 174 crore).

Reliance Natural Resources led the volume chart with trades of around 1.75 crore shares followed by IFCI (1.73 crore), Ispat Industries [Get Quote] (1.51 crore), Tata Teleservices [Get Quote] (1.19 crore) and Reliance Petroleum (1.02 crore).