Indian rupee, the local unit depreciated 12 paise to 75.27 per dollar on Thursday tracking weakness in Asian equities and strengthening US dollar.
Forex traders said positive opening in domestic equity market helped the local unit sustain momentum while factors like strong dollar, foreign fund outflows and rising COVID-19 cases dragged the domestic currency down.The rupee opened at 75.23 at the interbank forex market, then erased gains to touch 75.27, down 12 paise over its last close of 75.15 per dollar.
On the contrary, the dollar index, gauging the greenback's strength against a basket of six currencies, gained 0.04% to 96.11.
"Cues from Asia remained weak as currencies in the continent were weak against the US dollar this morning," Reliance Securities said in a research note.
On the domestic equity market front, the 30-share BSE benchmark Sensex was trading 282.22 points higher at 36,334.03 and broader NSE Nifty rose 60.20 points to 10,678.40.
Foreign institutional investors were net sellers in the capital market as they offloaded shares worth Rs 221.70 crore on Wednesday, according to provisional exchange data.
Brent crude futures, the global oil benchmark, fell 0.62 per cent to USD 43.52 per barrel.
Coronavirus has infected 136.96 lakh people worldwide and killed 5.86 lakh so far. Cases dues to the deadly disease touched 968,876 as of Thursday morning in India.
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