The downfall continued on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) with the Sensex falling down for the fifth consecutive trading session on Friday by 218.42 points to close the week at 16,769.11 on heavy profit booking on reports that Reliance Industries bucked the feeble market on a positive court decision.

The Nifty saw major sell-off on Friday and breached the psychological 5000 mark in intraday trade on worldwide meltdown.

The Supreme Court's decision in RIL-RNRL gas case was in support of RIL that helped the Nifty for maintaining the 5000 mark. All sectoral indices remained weak barring Oil and gas and FMCG.

The key heavyweight stocks broadened losses, with the market slumping during all the five trading sessions this week as euro zone debt fears distressed worldwide stocks.

Apart from the Oil and Gas index, all other sectoral indices on the BSE remained negative. The overall breadth of the stock market was weak. Real estate, banking, metal, pharmaceutical, capital goods and telecommunication scrips declined. FMCG stocks surged on defensive buying.

The market shed losses after a feeble opening. It came off the lower level amid huge volatility in mid-morning trade as scrips of RIL saw sharp swings when the SC was delivering the decision on the gas argument between the two Ambani brothers. The market fell again during early afternoon trade with the Sensex attaining a fresh intraday low.

The Sensex shed 303.40 points at the day's low of 16,684.13 in afternoon trade. Nifty finally closed at 5018.05 after losing 72.80 points.

BSE clocked turnover of Rs 4815 crore, higher than Rs 4492 crore on previous day.

The top losers were Reliance Infra, Tata Motors, DLF, SBI, Sterlite Inds, Wipro, TCS, Tata Steel, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, RCom, JP Asso and Bharti Airtel.

The top gainers comprised RIL, HUL, M&M and ONGC. (With Inputs from Agencies)