A ‘sacred’ lemon offered to a deity during the Mahashivratri at the 200-year-old Palanthinni Karupanna Eswaran temple in Modakurichi block was auctioned for ₹30,000 here on Tuesday.

The temple is located at Pudu Annamalai Palayam village, near Vilakethi, where during the end of the three-day festival, offerings to the deity are auctioned. The festival began on March 3 and auction was conducted by the temple authorities on March 5. Lemon, silver ring, silver anklet and other offerings were auctioned. A lemon that was placed in the foot of the deity was offered for ₹ 2 and many devotees quoted price. Finally, S. Sakthivel of 46 Pudur village quoted ₹ 30,000 and the ‘sacred lemon’ was give to him. He believed that the lemon would bring prosperity to his family.

Temple authorities said that the lemon fetching a whopping price was very much higher than the last year price of ₹ 5,000 a lemon. They added that the silver was auctioned for ₹ 50,000 while the silver anklet was auctioned for ₹ 43,000. Authorities said that a lemon auctioned for ₹ 39,000 at a temple festival in Villupuram district in 2017 continued to be the highest bidding price in the State.