Equity benchmarks snap 5-day winning run; Sensex falls 709 points, Nifty dives below 16,670

Mumbai: Market benchmarks halted their five-day rally to close with deep cuts on Tuesday, in line with a sell-off in global markets as participants dialled back risk exposure ahead of a key policy meeting of the US Federal Reserve amid continuing uncertainty over the Ukraine crisis.

Investors became poorer by more than Rs 2.61 lakh crore as the five-day rally in the market came to a halt on Tuesday.

After opening with gains of over 200 points, the 30-share Sensex turned highly volatile and tumbled in afternoon trade, before finally finishing 709.17 points or 1.26 per cent lower at 55,776.85.

Similarly, the broader NSE Nifty dived 208.30 points or 1.23 per cent to 16,663.

Tata Steel was the top laggard in the Sensex pack, sliding 4.89 per cent, followed by Kotak Mahindra Bank, Tech Mahindra, Infosys, Reliance Industries, HCL Tech and PowerGrid.

Mahindra & Mahindra and Maruti Suzuki topped the gainers' list, climbing as much as 2.31 per cent, after these firms featured in the list of 75 companies whose applications were cleared under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for the automobile and auto components sector.

The rupee surrendered its early gains to close 8 paise down at 76.62 against the

US dollar.