Amazon's 'Ram Mandir prasad' sweets weren't — CCPA rejected the intermediary defence

In the run-up to the consecration of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya in January 2024, Amazon India carried listings selling commercially produced sweets as 'Shri Ram Mandir Ayodhya Prasad' — food presented as blessed by the deity at the temple. The products had no authorisation, affiliation or endorsement from the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. The Confederation of All India Traders complained, and the Central Consumer Protection Authority issued a show-cause notice on 19 January 2024, three days before the consecration ceremony.

Amazon pulled the listings only after the notice and then argued it was a mere intermediary. The CCPA disagreed: hosting the listings was publication of misleading advertisements under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and the E-Commerce Rules, 2020, and the platform had earned commissions on the sales. One seller, Chandu Trading Company, booked gross merchandise sales of ₹25,26,309 through the disputed listings. In August 2026 the authority imposed a ₹1 lakh penalty, payable in 15 days.

The expensive part is not the fine. Amazon was ordered to run a due-diligence framework under which no product claiming to be prasad, prasadam, mahaprasad or bhog may be listed without documentary authorisation from the relevant religious institution — starting with ten major shrines including Tirumala Tirupati, Vaishno Devi, Kashi Vishwanath and Jagannath — plus keyword-based detection and takedown, prominent seller disclosures, and a compliance review after three to four months.

One seller booked ₹25.26 lakh on the listings; Amazon paid a ₹1 lakh fine and must run an authorisation framework covering ten major shrines.

The listings monetised a religious trust mark nobody had licensed, and a product page cannot show the certificate a devotee would want.

Automated monitoring existed, but prasad-type claims were never treated as a category requiring documentary proof before listing.

Amazon relied on intermediary immunity after the fact; the regulator held that profiting from misleading ads is not neutrality.

A marketplace earns commission on every listing it does not verify — and a trust mark is part of the product. When the mark belongs to someone else's shrine, 'mere intermediary' stops being a defence.

The order, reported in August 2026, requires Amazon to verify religious-offering claims against authorisation documents from ten named institutions and to expand the list over time, while displaying seller names, addresses and grievance-officer details under the E-Commerce Rules, 2020. The CCPA reserved the right to audit the framework's effectiveness after three to four months, and the ruling signals that religious-institution branding on marketplaces now needs certified provenance in India.