Industrial chemicals like organic dyes are typically utilized in textiles to color things. These industries discard their effluent into the water without any prior treatment, endangering the ecosystem and aquatic life. However, different researchers investigated transition metals for the photodegradation of organic dyes to save aquatic lives. The rare transition metal chalcogenide has low photodegradation efficiency for organic dyes, and their performance is enhanced by doping of inner transition metals. In this study, the cerium telluride (CeTe) and Mn doped CeTe were fabricated with the simple hydrothermal method. Various spectroscopy and microscopy techniques are employed to determine the structural behavior of photocatalysts. The surface area study shows that Mn doped CeTe contains a specific surface area (SSA) of 76 m2 g−1 than CeTe (21 m2 g−1). The photocatalytic efficiency of CeTe and doped CeTe was determined with the photocatalytic destruction of MB dye. Their result shows that doped material exhibited a higher 96 % photodegradation rate than CeTe (85 %) at 120 min using visible light. The scavenger analysis exposed that the isopropanol has effectively suppressed the photodegradation of methylene blue up to 26 %. Our finding suggests that doped transition metal chalcogenide can act as a potential candidate for environmental purifiers to eliminate the toxic substances from water.