Laravel Login api adds request Payload in response automatically on PHP Docker

API response includes automatically the request payload along with the expected response. This issue only occurs when the payload is sent in the request body as raw JSON not with form data.

This is route for login API and login method in AuthController .

Route::group([
'middleware' => 'api',
], function ($router) {
Route::post('login', [AuthController::class, 'login']);
});

public function login(Request $request)
{

    $response = null;

    $credentials = $request->only(['email', 'password']);
    $user = $this->getUserByEmail($credentials['email']);

    $token = $user->createToken($credentials['email'])->plainTextToken;

        $response =  response()->json([
            'access_token' => $token,
            'token_type' => 'bearer',
        ], Response::HTTP_OK);
    return $response;
}

Response: { "email":"[email protected]", "password":"123" } {"access_token":"73423|B70ciH8DzNiSnDmGwuzSadsfdsfdqJBIHSk62aYZ", "token_type":"bearer" }

What could be causing the request payload to be included in the API response in the Dockerized environment?

How can we prevent this and ensure the response only returns the expected data?