At close, the Sensex was down 983.58 points or 1.98% at 48,782.36, and the Nifty was down 263.80 points or 1.77% at 14,631.10 amid weakness in Asian markets and unabated rise in Covid-19 cases along with hiccups in vaccination drive back home. HDFC Bank, Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC), ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Asian Paints, Mahindra & Mahindra Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) were among top Sensex losers. While, ONGC, Sun Pharma, Dr Reddy’s, and Bajaj-Auto were the top gainers. About 1332 shares have advanced, 1554 shares declined, and 166 shares are unchanged. The Nifty Bank and Financial Services indices dropped 3 percent each while the Nifty FMCG, Auto, IT, and Realty indices slipped up to 1.5 percent. The Nifty Pharma index bucked the trend and gained settled 1 percent higher. The S&P BSE SmallCap settled just 0.07 percent lower and the MidCap index, on the other hand, slipped 0.65 percent.