On October 30, Mithun Babu, a resident of Kaniyambetta village in Kerala’s Wayanad district, placed an order on Amazon for a passport pouch for his passport. Two days later, on November 1, he received his order. When he opened the package, he found a passport inside one of the pockets of the passport pouch. “At first, I mistook it for a dummy passport. However, upon closer inspection, I realised I had received an original passport, belonging to a Thrissur native,” Mithun told the media.

He immediately contacted Amazon customer care. “However, they responded saying they will be careful in the future, and nothing else," he alleged. Mithun then took upon himself to find Muhammed Salih, the owner of the passport. He reportedly used the address on the passport to contact Salih, return the passport and understand how the Thrissur native’s passport ended up in the pouch.

According to Mithun, Salih had ordered the same purse from Amazon earlier and had kept his passport inside. Salih later decided to return the pouch. However, he forgot to take out his passport before returning the order.

"This was a mistake from the seller on Amazon. They did not check the returned product, and sent it again by repackaging it," said Mithun, adding he was surprised by the reaction of the customer care service, as they neither took responsibility for the oversight nor guided Mithun on what to do next.

It was recently in October that a person named Ameen from Aluva in Ernakulam district had ordered an iPhone from Amazon and received a soap bar and a Rs 5 coin instead. Based on the man’s complaint, the police registered a case. Later, the police in Kerala found that a man in Jharkhand had been using the same phone since September. When the police contacted the seller, they admitted it was a mistake and reimbursed Ameen the amount of Rs 70,900. The seller said that the product was out of stock, but was not sure how Ameen received a soap bar.