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Late afternoon sell-off in banking & financial counters dragged benchmark Indian equity indices lower. At close, the Sensex was up 84 points or 0.17% at 49,746, and the Nifty rose 54 points or 0.37% at 14,873.

UltraTech Cement was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, rallying over 4 per cent, followed by Titan, Tech Mahindra, Nestle India, TCS, Bajaj Finserv and L&T.

On the other hand, IndusInd Bank, ONGC, Sun Pharma, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank were among the laggards.

Domestic equities, despite trading positively for most of the session, gave up a large portion of gains towards the end of the day as concerns of rising COVID-19 cases continued to weigh on investor sentiment, said Binod Modi, Head-Strategy at Reliance Securities.

Barring financials, most of the key sectoral indices traded in the green with the Nifty Metal index remaining an outperformer ending with around 4% gains followed by Nifty IT rallied 1.18%. Nifty Realty, Nifty FMCG & Nifty Auto rose anywhere in the range of 0.20-0.80%. Whereas Nifty Bank index lost 0.63%

Broader market outrun benchmark as BSE MidCap index rose 0.63% and BSE SmallCap was up 0.73%.

Global markets:

Stocks in Europe reached record highs on Thursday, buoyed by optimism in Britain over easing lockdown restrictions.

Elsewhere in Asia, bourses in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul ended on a positive note, while Tokyo was in the red.

Stock exchanges in Europe were largely trading with gains in mid-session deals.

Meanwhile, the global oil benchmark Brent crude was trading 0.44% lower at USD 62.88 per barrel.

(With inputs from PTI)