The Sensex fell below the 10,000 level on the back of heavy selling action, weak global markets and fears of a deep and prolonged recession.

Realty, oil & gas, consumer goods and metal stocks were hammered badly.

The various relief and rescue packages declared by worldwide central banking institutions failed to lift investor response.

At 1:37 p.m., the 30-share index, BSE Sensex stood at 9936.97, down 599.19 points, from its previous closing mark, while the broad-based Nifty slipped to 2971.30, down 176.95 points.

Realty stocks fell deeply into the red zone reflecting the sharp erosion in prices of major stocks from that space and the BSE Realty index declined 7.78%. Metal stocks have also declined sharply. Oil and power stocks continue to trade weak. The BSE Metal, Oil & Gas and Power indices lost 6.32%, 6.23% and 6.01% respectively.

The majority of stocks from capital goods, IT, bank, consumer durables, PSU and auto sectors have suffered sharp losses in today’s session.

FMCG and pharma stocks have drifted down due to lack of support.

Reliance Industries, which lost 7.4%, State Bank of India (down 5.35%), Reliance Communications (down 2.85%), Reliance Infrastructure (down 4.25%), Bharti Airtel (down 6.7%), ICICI Bank (down 6.5%), BHEL (down 7.9%) and Larsen & Toubro 9down 5.7%) were the major losers this afternoon.

India Bulls Real Estate (down 13.6% at Rs 132.80) was the most prominent loser in the Realty index. Heavyweight stocks Unitech and DLF have lost 7.35% and 6.55% respectively.

The losers’ list also included Penland, HDIL, Omaxe, Orbit Corporation, Parsvnath Developers, Sobha Developers, Mahindra Lifespace, Anant Raj Industries and Ansal Infrastructure.