NEW DELHI: Losses in shares of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (down 1.44 per cent) and Piramal Enterprises (down 1.20 per cent) were keeping the Nifty Pharma index down during afternoon trade on Tuesday.

The Nifty Pharma index was trading 0.23 per cent down at 9,044 around 01:30 pm (IST).

Shares of GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals (down 0.76 per cent), Divi's Laboratories (down 0.19 per cent) and Cadila Healthcare (down 0.09 per cent) were also in the red in the index.

However, shares of Dr. Reddy's Laboratories (up 1.88 per cent), Lupin (up 0.85 per cent), Glenmark Pharmaceuticals (up 0.62 per cent), Aurobindo Pharma (up 0.08 per cent) and Cipla (up 0.03 per cent) were up in the index around that time.

Equity benchmark were in the negative zone on sustained selling in bank, financial and metal stocks.

The NSE Nifty50 index was 21 points down at 10,562, while the BSE Sensex was 51 points down at 34,395.

Among the 50 stocks in the Nifty50 index, 24 were trading in the green, while 26 were in the red.

Dr Reddy's Labs, Bajaj Auto, Hero MotoCorp, NTPC and Hindustan Unilever were among the top gainers in the Nifty50 index, while Ambuja Cements, Axis Bank, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank and BPCL were among the top losers.