Sensex tanks over 700 points; Nifty slips below 11,000

Sensex, Nifty fell for a sixth straight session on Thursday, dragged by Reliance Industries, banks and Tata Consultancy Services, while fears of fresh pandemic restrictions kept domestic investors jittery following a global selloff in stocks.

The broader NSE Nifty 50 index fell 1.7% to 10,942 and the S&P BSE Sensex slid 1.9% to 36,954.94 by 0538 GMT. Both the indexes have lost more than 4% so far this week.

Reliance, which has gained nearly 6% so far this month following two mega investments in its retail unit, fell 1.25% on Thursday.

Tata Consultancy Services fell 4.1% after the largest minority shareholder in Tata Group said on Tuesday it wanted to separate interests from the autos-to-steel conglomerate. That dragged the Nifty IT index by 2.3%.

Some traders are also worried the government might consider bringing in fresh restrictions and hurt businesses, following a report where a senior government official said India's finance ministry is reassessing its earlier optimism about a V-shaped economic recovery.

"Expectations of domestic recovery and growth has reduced due to the fear of restrictions coming back and increasing virus cases," said Vinod Nair, head of research, Geojit Financial Services Ltd.

Shares of Oil and Natural Gas Corp fell 2.1% after a fire broke out at one of its plants in Gujarat, its Hazira gas processing plant in Gujarat on Thursday morning.

Sun Pharma, India's biggest drugmaker by market cap, fell as much as 3.1% after a voluntary nationwide recall of a diabetes treatment.

Meanwhile, Asian shares fell after a slump on Wall Street overnight after global economic recovery hopes lost steam.