Bittu Tabahi: The 21-Year-Old Who Cleaned a River and Won 1.9 Million Followers

Every morning at 6 am, Surendra Singh Chaudhary would leave his home telling his family he was headed to college. Instead, the 21-year-old would make his way to a pond near his house and spend hours cleaning it. The deception lasted until a before-and-after video of his work began circulating online, by which time his parents still believed their son was simply a B.Sc. student with unusual hours.

Chaudhary, who goes by the Instagram handle "tabahi" — meaning devastation — first turned his attention to a pond near a local temple that had fallen into disuse because of filth. "I used to see how dirty the pond was," he said. "There was something in me that could not stand that, and one day I just began cleaning the pond."

That impulse grew into something larger. On January 26, 2026, Republic Day, he began cleaning the Ajnar River in Madhya Pradesh. The project consumed nine months, with what started as a group effort soon becoming largely solitary. He entered the polluted river himself, pulling out plastic, weeds, sludge and other waste using basic equipment. He spent around Rs 30,000 of his own money and continued without any formal backing.

His efforts have since extended beyond Madhya Pradesh. Chaudhary has restored small ponds in Rajasthan and Bengaluru, moving from state to state and working the same way each time — alone and unpaid at the start, before anyone had reason to notice.

Attention arrived this week. Industrialist Anand Mahindra, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav and Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia all praised his work. The Biaora municipal authorities deployed JCB and Poclain machines to help remove accumulated waste. His Instagram account now has 1.9 million followers.

Not all the response has been positive. Chaudhary said he initially faced criticism from people who questioned whether the exercise was for publicity, though the continuing documentation of the physical transformation gradually changed the response. He also expressed frustration about credit. "Now everyone is claiming that they were always behind my work and want to steal my credit," he said. "I worked alone when no one was paying attention. The local municipal authorities are annoyed at my work, and in future if they keep discouraging me then I will have to quit."

The work has taken a physical toll. "Right now, I have a bad skin infection," he said. "It's always dangerous to enter polluted ponds. But that is a small price I have to pay."

Asked about his self-chosen name, Chaudhary offered a cheeky response: "I'm glad I have this name for myself. Whatever I am doing is tabahi only in a sense."