Mumbai, March 28: Heavy buying emerged across the board as market tracked advances in European markets and ignored higher than expected inflation figures.

Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex closed at 16,371.29, up 2.22 per cent or 355.73 points. It touched a high of 16,452.08 and low of 15,884.45.

National Stock Exchange's Nifty ended 2.31% or112 points higher at 4,951.55. The index swung between intra-day high of 4,970 and low of 4,796.35.

Buying activity continued in sceond rung stocks as BSE Midcap Index closed at 6,522.79, up 3.93 per cent and BSE Smallcap Index ended at 7,901.98, up 4.98 per cent

Leading the rally were Tata Steel (up 9.96%), Infosys Technologies (6.54%), Wipro (6.02%), Larsen & Toubro (5.95%) and BHEL (5.25%)

HDFC Bank (down 2.77%), ONGC (1.31%), HDFC (0.96%), Tata Motors (0.95%) and Reliance Communications (0.92%) were the biggest index losers.

European shares rose from initial lows, pushing the FTSE 0.21 per cent higher in London, the DAX 0.19 per cent higher in Frankfurt and the CAC up 0.13 per cent in Paris.

India's wholesale price index rose 6.68 per cent in the 12 months to March 15, surging from the previous week's rise of 5.92 per cent and a market estimate of 5.96 per cent.