The Sensex fell down for the second straight day on Tuesday by 248.94 points to mark its closure at 17,137.14 on renewed offloading by local operators in view of hopeless opinion from worldwide markets.

The Nifty index of National Stock Exchange (NSE) also closed down by 74.25 points at 5148.50.

Weak European signals pushed the Sensex down by 250 points and the Nifty by 70 points. European stock markets including Footsie, CAC and DAX dropped between 1 and 1.5% due to fall in metal, banking and energy companies' scrips.

A rate increase in Australia, in which RBA lifted cash rate by 25 bps to 4.5%, worries about tighter monetary plan in China and potency in dollar aroused negative response in commodity scrips.

The US index futures also fell into the negative zone. Asian markets ended lower with Straits Times and Shanghai descending between 1.2 and 1.5%.

Banking, capital goods, IT, metal and realty scrips dropped down.

The overall market breadth was feeble, in complete reversal of a strong breadth earlier during the day. All the sectoral indices on BSE closed in the red zone.

The markets clocked total proceeds of Rs 94,002.21 crore. This comprised Rs 12,773.97 crore from the NSE cash segment, Rs 76,512.24 crore from the NSE F & O and the remaining Rs 4,716 crore from BSE cash section. BSE recorded income of Rs 4713 crore, more than Rs 3599.65 crore on Monday.

The BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices fell 1.75% each.

The shares of Hindalco Inds dropped in a steep manner by 5.84% to Rs 162.90, topping the top losers in Group A on the BSE.

Other major losers of the day included Tata Steel, Sterlite Ind, Grasim, JPAsso, ACC, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, L&T, Wipro, DLF, Rel Infra, M&M and Tata Motors.

The gainers' list comprised HDFC and Hero Honda. (With Inputs from Agencies)