A moderator of r/TeenIndia, one of India’s largest online communities for teenagers, was removed in January 2026 after being caught sexting minors, and other moderators knew of his conduct but said nothing, according to an announcement posted by the community’s own leadership.
The announcement is one of hundreds of screenshots, archived Reddit posts, server logs and social media posts reviewed for this report.
Together they show that adults in their twenties controlled the forum and its Discord server, which was built for users as young as 14, and that the community’s rules against sexual threats were routinely broken by the people meant to enforce them.
The records show that a senior moderator, 21, was ranked the forum’s top moderator on its official Instagram account eight months before he was removed. They show that the leadership told an adult server about his removal before telling teenagers on the main forum, and deleted a post that tried to warn them.
When an administrator posted a rape threat to the entire server in June 2025, the moderation bot refused to ban him because he was an administrator, and a search of that administrator’s messages returns 228 results for the word “rape”. A chat channel that members were told Discord had deleted still exists as a locked channel, active as recently as June 2026.
The moderator at the centre of the case has not been publicly charged with any offence. This report does not name him or any other moderator.
The moderators’ announcement of 30 January 2026. Names redacted.
The announcement was posted to every member of the Discord server at 6.09 pm on 30 January 2026. It said a moderator who had been given charge of the server a year earlier “was ousted as a pedophile and caught sexting with minors”.
It added that another moderator had admitted that they and a senior colleague “kinda always knew” what he was doing, but “didn’t say anything” because he had given them administrator roles. It warned teenagers who had joined both servers, “for your own safety”, to stay away from the other one.
r/TeenIndia was created on 30 December 2021. An archived copy from July 2022 shows it describing itself as “the classier teen subreddit”.
It became the centre of a group of linked forums, including r/TwentiesIndia and r/FashionTeenIndia, that users call the teenverse. Its Discord server grew, according to members, from about a thousand users to more than half a million. A small, overlapping group of moderators ran these spaces. Several were college students in their twenties.
The removed moderator held posts in three or four of these communities. On 17 May 2025, the forum’s official Instagram account published a slide titled “Your Top Mods”. He was ranked first.
The subreddit’s Instagram ranked the moderator first in May 2025. Names blurred.
In December 2025 and January 2026, screenshots appearing to show him seeking sexual contact with minors spread among users. His removal was first announced on a separate Discord server for r/TwentiesIndia, with about 4,000 members, most of them adults, one to two weeks after the screenshots began circulating.
A user who then posted a warning on r/TeenIndia saw the post removed by moderators for “doxxing”. Archived copies show it contained no information the leadership had not already made public. Critics within the community say the delay was used to secure control of the forums he moderated.
The problems predate his removal. On 18 January 2024, a member of the server wrote, “Gige [sic] name of 14yo girls. Plsplspls. I wanna rape”.
A message posted to the server on 18 January 2024. Name redacted.
On 20 January 2025, a member asked why the server’s main chat had been locked. Another replied, “Rape jokes”.
Why the general chat was locked, January 2025. Usernames redacted.
On 15 May 2025, a senior moderator announced that “anyone making a rape joke will get banned”. On 8 June, an administrator replied to that announcement by tagging the whole server with the message “when are we raping this cucktard”. A moderator typed the ban command. The server’s moderation bot replied, “That user is a mod/admin, I can’t do that.” Minutes later, the administrator posted a casteist slur.
An administrator’s rape threat in June 2025, and the bot’s refusal to ban him. Names redacted.
A search of the same administrator’s messages, captured in a screenshot reviewed for this report, returns 228 results for the word “rape”.
A search of one administrator’s messages for the word rape. Name redacted.
Such messages continued in 2026. On 1 April, a member wrote to another, “bro ill fucking rape you”. On 30 April, members described a user as capable “sirf rape threats” (only rape threats), “not actual rape”. On 22 March, a member posted an image of a toddler that drew a sexualised comment and was starred by four users. This report does not reproduce the image.
A threat posted on 1 April 2026. Names redacted.
Screenshots from the server also show administrators rating girls on voice calls on a scale of one to ten and calling them “ugly” and “fat”. The server’s roles, listed alongside ones for chess and music, included “Sexting”, “Sexy”, “Loli” and “Shota”, the last two terms from Japanese anime for sexualised depictions of children.
A woman who moderated a fashion forum in the group says she was removed after objecting that fellow moderators had shared her photographs while verifying her identity. Screenshots show she was later referred to on the server by a sexual slur based on her username.
In 2026, according to messages from the server, an older member called 15-year-old girls prostitutes, and teenagers who objected were harassed. Administrators shared sexualised deepfake images of members around the same time the server banned rape jokes.
The records also include casteist and ethnic slurs and mockery of religious practice. Bot logs show one senior administrator used a username describing himself as a “Hamas apologist”.
In February 2026, the server’s main chat disappeared. Members were told Discord had deleted it for breaking the platform’s rules.
A locked channel named “logs” still exists on the server with the same description as the old chat, “Of the Kind, For the Kind, By the Kind”. Its last message is dated 23 June 2026, and older starred messages from the main chat are stored in it. Members cannot read it. Its list of permitted roles, including “Loli”, “Shota” and “Sexting”, remains visible.
The locked logs channel, still active in June 2026. Personal details redacted.
A new main chat opened under the same name and description. It was active in August 2026.
The reopened general chat, August 2026.
Reddit and Discord both ban sexual content involving minors, and both rely on volunteer moderators to enforce their rules. On this server, complaints about administrators went first to other administrators. Users described Discord’s reporting system as slow and unresponsive. Warnings were deleted, and records were locked away instead of being reported to the platforms.
The leadership has not explained when it learned of the allegations against the removed moderator, why it informed an adult server before teenagers on the main forum, or why the main chat was said to have been deleted while a locked copy remained.
The moderators of r/TeenIndia declined to respond to questions for this report.
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