Indian woman in Japan gets lost purse back with Rs 1 lakh belongings intact

After misplacing her purse at a restaurant stop, an Indian woman went to a police station in Japan and found a stranger had already handed it to the authorities.An Indian woman in Japan got her purse back thanks to a kind stranger. (Photos: sonammidhax/Instagram)An Indian woman in Japan thought her purse containing cash, house keys and a costly microphone was gone for good. Then she walked into a police station and found someone had already returned it intact.Sonam Midha shared the experience on Instagram and narrated how she had gone to a restaurant with a friend on a rented bicycle. Before entering, she had left her purse in the bicycle’s basket and completely forgotten about it.They spent about an hour at the restaurant before returning to the bicycle. That was when Midha realised the purse was missing.“I almost lost 1 lakh rupees today,” she said while recounting the incident in a video. She and her friend checked the bicycle and the area where it had been parked, hoping the purse was still there. But it was nowhere to be found.With the microphone, cash and house keys inside, Midha assumed someone had taken it. She decided to head to the police station and report the purse as stolen. What happened there was the last thing she expected.After Midha described the contents of the missing purse, the officers told her that a matching bag had been handed in just a short while earlier.“When I told them all the things, they said that they had a purse kept with them that someone had just turned in. So when I looked, it was actually my purse,” she said.Everything was still inside. The person who found it had not taken the cash or any of the other belongings.Midha was visibly emotional as she processed what had happened.“I wanted to cry, like, such nice people! People here are so kind, and humanity still exists here. And thank you, Japan,” she said.Watch the video here:She later captioned the video, “Visiting the Police station and seeing an officer expecting my arrival was not on my bingo card of this year. Love you Japan.”The incident also prompted users to share their own experiences of finding lost belongings returned by strangers in Japan.For Midha, a forgotten purse in a bicycle basket could have ended as an expensive and stressful loss. Instead, it became an unexpected reminder that sometimes a stranger’s small act of honesty can completely change the ending of a bad day.- EndsPublished By: Srimoyee ChowdhuryPublished On: Aug 23, 2026 16:51 IST