Online, he is known as “Bittu Tabahi” but his real name is Surendra Singh Chaudhary.

For months, 20-year-old Surendra Singh Chaudhary has been getting into the polluted Ajnar River in Madhya Pradesh and pulling out plastic, bottles, algae and other waste with his own hands. The BSc student from Biaora in Rajgarh district started the clean-up on January 26, Republic Day. He had thought about doing it for some time. Whenever he went to a temple or passed by the river, the condition of the water bothered him.Then, on January 26, he decided to stop thinking about it and start cleaning. “I started this work on the 26th of January. And I have been doing it ever since,” Bittu told TOI. He initially had friends helping him. But gradually, some stopped participating. Bittu continued with the work, returning repeatedly to the river and its ghats.Online, he is known as “Bittu Tabahi”, and videos of his clean-up have now turned him into a viral sensation.

He had been thinking about the river for a while

Image Courtesy: Instagram/@bittu_tabahi

Bittu's decision to clean the Ajnar was not sudden. As he told TOI, he would think about the river whenever he went to a temple or passed by it. “I used to think about it beforehand. Whenever I used to go to the temple or went past the river, I used to think about cleaning the river,” he said.On January 26, he finally decided to begin. He did not have a large team waiting for him. He had a few friends, but their involvement changed with time. “Yes, I had friends. But gradually, things started to change. Some people liked it and some didn't,” he told TOI. Eventually, much of the work was left to Bittu.He repeatedly entered the polluted water to remove plastic, algae and other waste. What began as a small local effort continued for months.

His family did not even know at first

One of the more unusual details of Bittu's story is that his family was initially unaware of the scale of what he was doing. When asked by TOI whether his family had ever told him not to undertake the work, Bittu said they did not know about it initially. “My family didn't know about it,” he said. His work became known to them after Anand Mahindra shared it on X. “They found out when Anand Mahindra posted it on Twitter,” Bittu told TOI. The post had brought his work much wider attention, and his family eventually learned what he had been doing.They were not entirely comfortable with him entering the polluted river alone. “They told me not to do it alone. Your health will be affected and things like that,” Bittu said. Their concern was justified.

The polluted water affected his health

Before and after videos of his clean-up have now turned him into a viral sensation.

Bittu has already suffered health problems because of the clean-up. He told TOI that he developed infections on his foot and still has a slight problem. In an earlier interview with The Indian Express, he also spoke about the effect of prolonged exposure to the polluted water. He said the skin on his hands and feet had started peeling.Despite the health problems, he continued returning to the river. He also reportedly began the work without proper protective equipment and did not know how to swim when he first started entering the water. The effort has therefore involved more than simply picking up garbage from the riverbank. Bittu has repeatedly gone into the contaminated water to remove waste that had accumulated there.

He spent around Rs 30,000 on the effort

Bittu's clean-up has also been a personal financial effort. According to reports, he and his friends pooled money to purchase basic equipment and dustbins. The expenditure on the initiative has been reported at around Rs 30,000. Bittu told TOI that the dustbins placed around the river were installed by him.“I had installed a few dustbins as well around the river. Dustbins were installed by myself only, no funding from anyone,” he told TOI. That detail is important because the initiative has not been described as a government-funded river-cleaning programme. It began as a college student's personal effort.

“I don't know why people throw garbage in the river”

Bittu says one of the things he finds hardest to understand is why people continue to throw waste into the river.“I don't know why people throw garbage in the river. I don't know why they do that. You can't stop them,” he told TOI. That is also the problem he sees beyond the physical clean-up. Removing the existing garbage can make a stretch of the river look cleaner. But keeping it that way requires people to stop putting fresh waste into it.Bittu has tried to address some of that problem by installing dustbins around the river. He has also worked with religious offerings collected from the river, turning the material into compost instead of allowing it to remain in the water.

What is the Ajnar River like now?

After months of work, Bittu says the stretch he has worked on is now “very clean”. Asked by TOI whether the river is actually as clean as it appears in his videos, he said it currently is. “It is currently very clean,” he said. The before-and-after videos have become an important part of his campaign because they allow people to see the change for themselves. But Bittu says the work is not finished.

He wants to take the work to a bigger level

Bittu says one of the things he finds hardest to understand is why people continue to throw waste into the river.

The 20-year-old does not want to stop with the Ajnar. “Currently, I want to do it on a bigger level,” he told TOI. He is still a second-year BSc student and says he does not have a concrete name or formal structure for what he wants to build next. “Naam toh abhi kuch nahi hua hai abhi, dekhte hain… aur isse bada karne ki sochte hain,” he said. For now, the plan is simply to do something bigger.

Anand Mahindra noticed him first

Bittu's work received a major boost in visibility after industrialist Anand Mahindra shared his story on X. Mahindra described Bittu as his “Monday Motivation” and highlighted the fact that a young man was physically cleaning a polluted river. Mahindra also defended the role of social media in such efforts. He argued that if the desire for likes or attention encourages someone to do meaningful work, there is value in that attention. His post helped Bittu's local effort reach a much larger audience.

Now Kevin Pietersen has backed him

Former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen has also recently praised Bittu. Pietersen shared photographs of the young man and his clean-up work and wrote: “I read this story this am and wanted to share it with you! WELL DONE, Bhai! Heroic, I say! Deserves international recognition!”Bittu has said that people mocked him, called him “crazy” and even asked him to clean their drains. “They make fun of me, call me crazy,” he told The Indian Express. His family, too, was initially unaware of what he was doing.Now, his work has been noticed by people across India and by an internationally known former cricketer. But the attention has also brought an unexpected criticism. Some people have questioned whether the dramatic transformation shown in his videos is genuine or whether AI was used to create the before-and-after images. Bittu has now answered those questions himself.

"I have done this work with my hard work"

In a recent Instagram video, Bittu responds to people who have been calling his river-cleaning videos AI-generated. “After cleaning the river so much, people will call it AI,” he says. He explains that he has spent around two-and-a-half months working on the river and asks people to look at the amount of garbage that was there before.“I used to clean the river by breaking it. Then I used JCB's help to clean the dirt in the river. You can see that I have not done this work with AI,” he says. He then makes his point directly: “I have done this work with my hard work.” Bittu ends the video by asking viewers whether they believe his work is AI.

From being called ‘crazy’ to being called ‘heroic’

Bittu's story has therefore taken an unusual turn. The same young man who says people in his locality made fun of him and called him crazy is now being praised publicly by the whole India.