The Sensex, which recovered its previous losses after a sharp setback, dropped into the red zone again owing to lack of support at senior levels.

At 11.25 a.m., the Sensex was down with a huge loss of 71.75 points at 17,775.29. The Nifty was also down by about a point at 5209.90.

BHEL, Reliance Energy, Ranbaxy Laboratories, NTPC and Tata Motors have made a profit of 1 to 2.25 per cent on strong buying support. The other top gainers were Maruti Udyog, Reliance Industries and Larsen & Toubro.

The stocks that made marginal gains included Hindustan Unilever, Cipla, SBI, Tata Steel, Bajaj Auto and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories. Bharti Airtel, Mahindra & Mahindra and Ambuja Cements traded flat.

ACC, ONGC, Reliance Communications, TCS, Satyam Computer Services, Hindalco, HDFC Bank and ITC followed their previous closing prices by 0.3% - 1%.

HDFC was the major loser on the Sensex, which lost around 4%. The stocks included ICICI Bank, Wipro, Infosys Technologies, Grasim Industries and HDFC Bank had lost 1 to 3 per cent.

DLF, which filed a strong gain yesterday, was down by more than 2% at Rs 874 when trading was blocked because of sun outage. IFCI also slipped 3.25% to Rs 93.20.