Opening Bell: Sensex, Nifty50 down 1% as Ukraine crisis deepens; fear index up 5%

At 9:19 am, both headline indices were down 1.5 percent. The 30-scrip index was down 828.3 points at 54,274.4 and the broader Nfity50 benchmark was at 16,256.2, down 241.9 points.

Asian Paints, Hero MotoCorp, Maruti Suzuki, Axis Bank, Eicher, Wipro and Titan -- down between 2.2 percent and 3.8 percent -- were the top blue-chip laggards. Only five stocks in the Nifty50 pack were above the flatline: Hindalco, Tata Steel, IPL, NTPC and JSW Steel, up between 0.2 percent and one percent.

Infosys, Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Asian Paints were the biggest drags for both indices.

"The entire situation has got extremely cloudy and uncertain. Whatever we are seeing in the commodity markets is definitely going to have an impact on corporate earnings and the news headlines are so depressing, which are going to impact the sentiment as well," said Dipan Mehta, Director at Elixir Equities.

The India VIX -- known in market parlance as the fear index -- was down 5.4 percent at 29.7. Last week, Russia's move to invade Ukraine had sent the volatility index soaring to a 20-month high of 34.

Tremors made their way to broader markets, with the Nifty Midcap 100 and Smallcap 100 indices down more than one percent each.

Equities in other Asian markets suffered deep losses in early hours. MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan was down 1.6 percent at the last count. Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 2.6, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 2.5 percent and China's Shanghai Composite 0.7 percent. 

S&P 500 futures fell one percent. Overnight on Wall Street, the three main indices fell 0.3-1.6 percent dragged by growth stocks such as Tesla and Amazon.