Mumbai, Oct 23 : The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) fell to its lowest since June 2006 on Thursday as a global rout of equities raised worries of further foreign investor selling, before some bargain hunting helped the market regain some composure.

Leading private sector firm the Reliance Industries, which reports quarterly results after market hours, was down 3.9 percent at 1,264.70, having earlier fallen as much as 6.4 percent to its lowest since Dec. 2006.

The company is forecast to report a modest 2.2 percent rise in net profit on slimmer refining margins.

Asian stocks dropped to a four-year low for a second day today, with exporters especially hard hit, on growing fears that a severe global downturn would depress corporate earnings further.

Analysts said that they were expecting that the Indian stock would fall at the open as Japan''s Nikkei stock index plunged to a new five-and-half year low amid fears of recession.

"Today''s meltdown , we can see, again due to very weak global cues, it seems that the problem is too serious, whatever the governments are taking measures are not sufficient because they are not reflecting on the market," said Siddhart Kunawala, a stock analyst.

The 30-share BSE index opened down 4.8 percent and fell as far as 9,682.40, but by 10:59 a. m. had pared its losses to be down 2.07 percent 9,959.83.

The index is down by over half in 2008, with foreigners selling a net of 12.2 billion dollars in stocks so far this year, largely reversing 2007''s record net buying of 17.4 billion dollars. (ANI)