After spending eight months to remove tonnes of garbage from a river, Bittu Tabahi was left disappointed after finding Madhya Pradesh’s Ajnar river littered with plastic bags and other waste once again.Surendra Singh Choudhary, popularly known as Bittu Tabahi, is a 20-year-old environmental activist who had gone viral for taking it upon himself to restore the polluted Ajnar river in Biaora, Rajgarh.However, is a video shared on Instagram on October 13, he showed garbage scattered along the riverbanks in Rajgarh district. The sight came as a setback for Bittu, who had spent months cleaning the water body largely on his own, without specialised equipment.Expressing his frustration over the river’s condition, Bittu wrote, “I never imagined that eight months of my hard work would go to waste like this.”However, the return of garbage did not deter him from taking action. The video showed him entering the river and pulling out plastic bags and other rubbish in an attempt to restore the stretch he had worked so hard to clean.Despite not knowing how to swim, Bittu ventured into the water to remove the waste. He also appealed to his social media followers for suggestions on how to clear larger quantities of garbage more efficiently.Remember Bittu Tabahi? The guy who spent 8 months cleaning a river?He has now shared another heartbreaking video. The Ajnar River, which he worked so hard to clean, is full of garbage again. Plastic bags, flowers and waste are back in the water.Imagine spending 8 months of your life cleaning a river, only to see people destroy all your hard work in a few weeks.We celebrate people like him, but we also need to ask ourselves why we keep throwing garbage into the same rivers someone else is working so hard to save.Cleaning a river takes months. Polluting it takes seconds.Bittu cannot save our rivers alone. We need civic sense, strict fines for those who dump garbage and a little respect for our environment.— Nalini Unagar (@NalinisKitchen) October 14, 2026The incident has once again highlighted the challenges faced by grassroots environmental activists, particularly when their efforts are undermined by continued waste dumping.