Mumbai, Jan. 23 -- Domestic equity benchmarks ended sharply lower on Friday, erasing early gains as persistent foreign institutional investor selling weighed heavily on sentiment and sparked a broad-based selloff in the latter half of the session.

The Sensex and Nifty opened marginally higher, supported by positive cues from Asian markets and easing geopolitical concerns linked to Greenland. However, sentiment turned decisively weaker post noon, with aggressive profit-booking and sustained selling pressure dragging the indices into the red. The Nifty closed below the 25,050 level, with all NSE sectoral indices ending in the red. Realty and PSU bank stocks led the losses amid heavy selling pressure.

Foreign fund outflows remained the key...