A popular British YouTuber has been banned from the streaming platform Kick after a Diwali-night stunt in Delhi went dangerously wrong and injured a bystander.
Sam Pepper was also banned from the social media app Pump.fun following the 20 October incident in India’s capital, videos of which have been circulating on social media and reportedly cross-posted on livestreaming platforms.
It showed the former Big Brother UK participant firing small Roman candle-style fireworks in the direction of another group during the livestream. The firework appears to hit a bystander, and Pepper can be seen in the video raising a fist in the air as someone nearby yells, “Headshot!”
Moments later, locals show up to tell Pepper that the firework hit a girl in the eye.
The Hindu festival of Diwali, which marks the victory of good over evil and light over darkness, is celebrated across India with fireworks displays, as well as lighting of lamps, feasts, and prayer.
In a statement to The Independent, Pepper said he “feels incredibly guilty” for his actions and called the incident “a serious lesson learnt the hard way”.
“I was in India for a big celebration that heavily involved fireworks. I was with a big group of locals and just joined in with everything they was doing. They were shooting small rockets that don’t explode back and forward,” he said.
“I joined stupidly and it ended up hitting a teen girl who was standing with the other group of adults.”
Pepper claimed the girl ended up with a cut above her eye and was given stitches at a hospital and later sent home.
“The girl’s vision is fine and she went home pretty quick,” he said, adding that he asked a relative of someone he knew to “go and help out at hospitals and pay for the hospital and gave the family some money along with my apology”.
Some Indian media outlets reported that the girl was eight years old. The extent of her injury was not immediately known.
Pepper, who described the event as “an accident” and “not something I did out of the blue to be mean”, said he was “with a group following their lead which seems incredibly stupid looking back”.
“I’m an adult and should have thought smarter,” he told The Independent.
On X, formerly Twitter, Pepper issued a statement writing: “Was in India tonight with another big group firing small fire cracker back and forth at each other, seems stupid now I’m writing this.
“But one of the group on the other side got hit by a cracker I shot and got a cut above their eye brow. I feel terrible, we sent someone with them to get them checked out and made sure all costs were paid, they got a paper stitch, and are now back home.”
Yeah this guy was being dramatic, still feel terrible anyone got hurt. But it was just a cut luckly.
— Sam Pepper (@sampepper) October 20, 2025
Responding to a user who brought up the local’s comment that the teenager had lost an eye, Pepper wrote: “Yeah this guy was being dramatic, still feel terrible anyone got hurt. But it was just a cut luckily.”
The streamer confirmed that Pump.fun, a crypto-driven social media app, and Kick both banned him following the incident.
“I won’t be doing anything stupid like this again,” Pepper said. “It’s a serious lesson that I learnt the hard way and thank God it wasn’t any worse.”
In a follow-up post on his Discord server, Pepper said he would not be returning to Kick or sharing further information about the injured girl.
“It’s beyond disrespectful for me to intrude anymore,” he wrote. “I’ve apologised to them and made sure they had everything they wanted, and will leave them be.”
Pepper has previously been involved in controversy over his “social experiment” video posts. In 2014, there was outrage after he used a prosthetic hand to pinch women’s bottoms on the streets of Los Angeles. He later released a second part to the video of a woman grabbing the bottoms of men, which was swiftly taken down.
In a third video, he called both previous parts a “social experiment” and maintained both videos were staged and scripted.
The following year, he faced intense backlash for a “prank” video that staged the fake murder of a friend, prompting more than 220,000 people to petition YouTube for his removal.
