reply_to_message property absent in group chats

When replying to a message, the message object should look something like this:

{ message_id: 35,
  from: 
   { id: 37254959,
     first_name: 'Tom',
     last_name: 'Hansen',
     username: 'tomhansen' },
  chat: 
   { id: 37254959,
     first_name: 'Tom',
     last_name: 'Hansen',
     username: 'tomhansen',
     type: 'private' },
  date: 1453832286,
  reply_to_message: 
   { message_id: 17,
     from: 
      { id: 37254959,
        first_name: 'Hans',
        last_name: 'Tomsen',
        username: 'hanstomsen' },
     chat: 
      { id: 37254959,
        first_name: 'Tom',
        last_name: 'Hansen',
        username: 'tomhansen',
        type: 'private' },
     date: 1453829963,
     text: 'Hello.' },
  text: '/cmd1' }

The object above contains the reply_to_message property, because the message replies to another message. This works as expected when in a private chat, but not when in a group chat.

In a group chat the reply_to_message property is absent, even though the message replies to another message:

{ message_id: 35,
  from: 
   { id: 37254959,
     first_name: 'Tom',
     last_name: 'Hansen',
     username: 'tomhansen' },
  chat: { id: -25291336, title: 'Group title', type: 'group' }
  date: 1453832286,
  text: '/cmd1' }

Is there a reason for this?

[ts95]

For future reference I’d like to inform other users that might have the same problem. The reason for the absence of the reply_to_message property was that the bot was in privacy mode. All Telegram bots are in privacy mode by default, which limits them from receiving certain messages. More about that here. When I disabled this mode through the BotFather user, the reply_to_message property became present for all messages, which solved my problem.

[fiatjaf]

That’s not correct. According to Telegram docs bots should get the reply_to_message when users are replying to bot messages but that doesn’t happen for me. However it does get the reply_to_message when users are replying to other messages using a bot command. All this in privacy mode.

The first case (users replying to bot messages) also doesn’t include a reply_to_message not even when the bot is a group admin (which means the bot gets all the messages) nor in a private conversation between the user and the bot.