MUMBAI: It wasn't a pleasant Valentine day for equity investors on Monday the 14th of February at all as they have lost a whopping Rs 8.54 lakh crore in market capitalisation due to one of the biggest crashes in recent times. 

Taking cues from their global peers which fell due to oil prices, fed rate fears, rising Russia-Ukraine tensions and weakening of the rupee, the benchmark equity indices on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) crashed by around 3 per cent on Monday. 

At the close of the day, the Sensex crashed 1,747.08 points (3.00 per cent) to settle at 56,405.84 while the Nifty 50 fell 531.95 points (3.06 per cent) to end at 16,842.80. 

According to market experts Shantanu Ghosh apart from the fallout of the Ukraine crisis and the retaliation by the United States, investors and traders were also spooked by inflation concerns. "Crude prices are on the rise and at the US $ 95 per barrel if the Ukraine crises are not averted it could cross the US $ 100 per barrel and then it will impact the balance of payment and then the economy as it will fuel inflation."

Right from early morning trades, the markets saw extremely high selling pressures across all counters mostly on the back of a global sell-off and the trend continued throughout the day at one point of the day the Sensex touched an intraday low of 56,295.70.

Among the top losers on the BSE was the company operating the largest airline in India, InterGlobe Aviation which lost about 7.60 per cent to close at Rs 2,092, counters of Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Adani Enterprises, PNB, Bank of Baroda, HDFC Life and SBI fell by more than 5 per cent.