Mumbai, April 29: The sensex surged to a lifetime high in a short three-hour special session today as the worries over the IPO scam evaporated from the minds of investors.

“We saw good volumes for the three-hour session and though the FIIs ((foreign institutional investors) were absent from the market, there was enough action on the bourses fuelled by demand from domestic players,” said V.K. Sharma of Anagram Stock Broking. BSE clocked a turnover of Rs 1,675.30 crore.

The 30-scrip sensex opened at 11,881.51 points and gradually moved up to touch 12,061.06 before ending at an all-time high closing peak of 12,042.56, a gain of 190.63 points or 1.61 per cent over yesterday’s close. The S&P CNX Nifty rose 49.25 points to 3,557.60.

The special trading session was held because the National Stock Exchange was testing its Chennai backup facility.

Investors were no longer spooked after the regulator backed off from some of the harsh measures it had announced late on Thursday against a cabal of operators, financiers and depository participants involved in a conspiracy to corner shares being allotted out of maiden flotations.

“This absence of panic among the investors reflects the resilience of the Indian markets. We hope that once the concerned parties make their representations to the regulator, the whole controversy will die down,” said an analyst with a leading brokerage.

The sensex had lost 491 points in initial trading yesterday after the market regulator directed 24 operators to stop trading for allegedly opening fake accounts to corner retail quotas in 105 IPOs, but it recovered lost ground after the ban on Indiabulls was suspended temporarily.

Karvy chairman C. Parthasarathy has said the group will present its case to Sebi on Tuesday.

The Indiabulls’s scrip, which was battered in the initial hours of yesterday’s trading session, was among the highest traded counters today. The stock soared Rs 30.9 or 10.94 per cent to Rs 313.40 with 15.24 lakh shares traded today.