Laravel 10 Form validate rules redirect to home

I have been working on a Laravel API project and created this controller function to register the API route. If I remove the validator, it works fine meaning it doesn’t take me to the Laravel homepage when I send a POST request

But I can’t leave it without validation so when I am trying to send a blank request to check if the validator is working or not it takes me to the homepage ( screenshot added of Postman check below and cURL )

public function register(Request $request)
    {

        $validatedData = $request->validate([
            'name' => 'required|max:255',
            'email' => 'required|unique:users|max:255',
            'password'  => 'required|min:6',
        ]);

        if ($validatedData->fails()) {
            return response()->json(['message' => $validatedData->messages()], 422);
        }

        $user = new User();
        $user->name = $request->name;
        $user->email = $request->email;
        $user->password = Hash::make($request->password);
        $user->role = 0;
        $user->save();
        
        return response()->json(['message' => 'Patient registered successfully'], 201);

    }

and my API route is:

Route::post('patient/register', [PatientController::class, 'register']);

>Solution :

This should work:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Validator;

$validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
    'name' => 'required|max:255',
    'email' => 'required|unique:users|max:255',
    'password' => 'required|min:6',
]);

if ($validator->fails()) {
    return response()->json(['message' => $validator->errors()], 422);
}