A modest egg, donated by an elderly widow during a crowdfunding campaign for the construction of a mosque in Sopore town of Baramulla district in Indian-held Kashmir, fetched a whopping Rs 2.26 lakh during an auction, media reports.

A mosque committee was raising fund in in Mallpora village of Sopore town, around 55 kilometres from Srinagar city and according to it, the egg costs around Rs 6-8 in the local market

It added they had collected donations in both cash and kind to raise money for building the mosque and an elderly woman, who requested anonymity, donated a freshly-laid egg.

The committee said all donations made in kind, including the chicken egg, were put up for auction, where the poor woman’s humble offering turned out to be the most sought-after item by the bidders, so much so that for three days and multiple rounds of bidding, the egg was ‘sold’ to a successful bidder.

Each time a bidder bought the egg, they paid the bidding amount and then returned the egg to the committee as a donation to raise more, locals told a foreigng news agency.

According to the report, on the final day of the auction, the egg was bought by a local business owner, Danish Ahmed, who paid a whopping Rs 70,000 for the old woman’s modest offering.

“We are very eager to complete the construction of this mosque at the earliest. As the mosque is planned to be big, the funds needed are also rather large,” Danish, a resident of neighbouring Warpora area, said.

“I am not a rich man but it was just my passion and emotion towards the sacred space…,” he added. Ahmad said that the egg fetched a stupendous amount of Rs 2,26,350 in cumulative funds after it was bought by bidders during multiple rounds of auction.