Indian benchmark indices witnessed profit booking for the fourth consecutive session on July 24 with Nifty below 24,450 mostly led by banking names.

At close, the Sensex was down 280.16 points or 0.35 percent at 80,148.88, and the Nifty was down 65.50 points or 0.27 percent at 24,413.50.

Despite weak global cues, the Indian indices opened higher but turned lower in the initial hour and extended the losses as the day progressed but last-hour buying helped erase some of the intraday losses.

Top Nifty losers were Bajaj Finserv, Britannia Industries, Bajaj Finance, Tata Consumer, and Axis Bank, while gainers included HDFC Life, Tech Mahindra, BPCL, NTPC, and Tata Motors.

On the sectoral front, healthcare, oil & gas, media, telecom, and power are up 1-2 percent, while FMCG and bank index are down 0.5-1 percent.

BSE Midcap index was up 0.7 percent and smallcap index rose 2 percent.

More than 200 stocks touched their 52-week high on the BSE including NTPC, ITC, Dr Reddy's Labs, Max Financial, Indraprastha Gas, CG Consumer, Deepak Nitrite, Federal Bank, Glenmark Pharma, Oracle Financial Services, among other.

Financial and FMCG stocks led losses, with Bajaj Finance, Axis Bank, Britannia Industries, Tata Consumer Products and Bajaj FinServ all falling around 2 percent.

On the positive side, Tata Motors, NTPC, BPCL, Tech Mahindra and HDFC Life jumped 2-4 percent.