India's 'Clean Lake' Hero Lies Forgotten After Accident, Facing Amputation

Bandipora: Legs tightly bandaged and eyes brimming with tears, Bilal Ahmad Dar lies in the quiet corner of his makeshift one-room tin-shed home in Laharwalpora village in north Kashmir’s Bandipora district. The narrow bed barely fits his body. Propped slightly to one side, he stares at the rows of awards and certificates carefully arranged along the wall.

They came from across India: environmental conventions, official programmes in Srinagar, and district-level events in Bandipora.

“This one was from Delhi,” Bilal says quietly, stretching his arm towards a plaque placed within reach of his mattress. “I was a delegate for the award.” The inscription reads: Rising India, Real Heroes - Bilal Ahmad Dar, Ambassador, Swachh Bharat Mission. It was presented to him at the third edition of News18’s Rising India Summit in New Delhi in 2023.

At the time, Bilal was celebrated as a national role model, a young environmental activist from a remote Kashmiri village, Laharwalpora, where literacy rates remain low and livelihoods largely depend on fishing. As a teenager, Bilal dedicated his childhood to cleaning Wular Lake, Asia’s second-largest freshwater lake. Today, he speaks from a bed he cannot leave.

“I travelled so much back then,” he recalls. “I stood on big stages. People clapped. They called me a hero.” He pauses, his fingers lingering on the engraved metal. “Now I can’t even stand.”

Bilal, once known across the Valley as Wular’s Billa, the boy who waded daily into freezing waters of Wular Lake to pull out waste, now lies immobilised, his future uncertain. Doctors have warned that his injured left leg may need to be amputated. Medical bills have already crossed ₹14 lakh (€15,500), raised through public donations and lifelong savings.

“They are saying to amputate my leg as it won’t heal here,” Bilal tells FairPlanet, staring at the bandages. “Who will take care of my ailing mother and sisters if this happens?”

The accident that ended everything

Bilal’s life shattered on the morning of Wednesday, 2 October 2024. He left home early, hoping to reach Srinagar and resume his duties at the Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC).

To arrive on time, he climbed onto a friend’s motorcycle for the nearly 70-kilometre journey. But at around 8:45 am, barely seven kilometres from home, the journey ended abruptly. A JCB bulldozer crashed into the motorcycle, hurling Bilal onto the road and shattering his left leg.

“I remember checking the time just minutes before the accident,” Bilal says, his voice barely audible. “After that, I don’t remember anything until I woke up on a ventilator at the Bone & Joint Hospital in Srinagar, with my leg hanging in bandages.”

Surgeons fought for months to save the limb. But nothing went right. Two years later, doctors are now suggesting amputation. “They are saying my leg won’t heal here,” Bilal repeats. “If they cut it off, who will take care of my mother and sisters?”

A hero forgotten

What cuts deeper than the accident is the silence that followed. Mugli Begum (75) watches her son waste away, abandoned by the people who once praised him.

"They thronged us when he was cleaning the lake," she says. "Now no one has stepped into our door in two years."

Bilal travels to GMC Srinagar every Monday for check-ups, carried on neighbours' shoulders just to reach the car.

"They lift me on their shoulders," he says. "That hurts more than the injury."

Bilal lost his father in 2008, and the 2014 floods destroyed what little the family had left. By Class 7, he had dropped out to support his mother.

Fame arrives, Security does not

In July 2017, a short video of Bilal hauling garbage out of Wular went viral online. By September 2017, in the 36th episode of Mann ki Baat, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about him. Modi praised the then 18-year-old Bilal as an inspiration, noting that the Srinagar Municipal Corporation had made him its Swachh Bharat (Clean India) “Brand Ambassador” for cleanliness. At home, the moment felt surreal.

“People were calling from everywhere,” Mugli recalls. “They said, ‘Your son’s name has been announced on the radio by the Prime Minister.’”

The SMC presented Bilal with a uniform, and an ₹8,000 (€ 75) monthly honorarium. Most importantly, officials promised him that once he turned 18, he would be given a permanent government job. “They told me, ‘Once you turn 18, your job will be permanent,’” Bilal says. “They said my future was safe.”

In 2017, Kashmiri filmmaker Jalal Uddin Baba released Saving the Saviour, an award-winning documentary that won the Best International Documentary Film at the 2018 We Art Water Film Festival in Madrid, focusing on Bilal’s campaign to clean Wular Lake.

The applause fades

But after the spotlight dimmed, little changed at home. From 2017 through 2024, Bilal’s monthly stipend remained the same ₹8,000 (€ 75), year after year, even as prices rose sharply. Each time he visited the SMC office to ask about his regularisation, he received the same reply: “Process is ongoing,” or “Wait for the next order.”

Bilal recalls being told repeatedly that his regularisation was being processed. "I waited. I kept waiting," he says. "They used my name to tell people to keep Kashmir clean, but nothing changed for me."

Environmental activist Dr Raja Muzaffar Bhat says to FairPlanet that Bilal’s case shows what happens when institutions use individuals for publicity but do not support them when they fall into crisis.

“One commissioner made him brand ambassador, and once that officer was transferred, the system moved on,” Bhat says. “This is a tragedy. Policies change with personalities.”

Bhat says once Bilal was publicly celebrated, the institution had a moral responsibility to stand by him. “You cannot call a young boy a cleanliness hero and then abandon him when he is fighting for his life,” he says.

A broken body, an uncertain future

But inside the same tin-shed, Bilal now battles for survival, clinging to one hope: that the authorities, and the people who once made him a star, will help him reach a better hospital and cover his medical expenses.

“I can’t see my mother working anymore,” Bilal says, tears rolling down his cheeks. “‘I can’t make my sisters go door to door for my treatment.’ He struggles to finish the sentence.” “If the government can just help me stand on my feet again, I will go back to the waters,” he says softly. “Those waters made me who I was, and who I am.”

The government has spent hundreds of crores on schemes to restore Wular Lake, but its most dedicated young guardian lies forgotten in a tin-roofed shed. His mother Mugli and his two younger sisters, Kulsuma and Ruksana, sit nearby in silence, their futures uncertain. He still holds onto one slender hope: that a specialist outside Kashmir might be able to save his leg—if only his family had the means.

Bilal wonders why the country that once praised him now looks away. "I served them honestly for eight years," he says. "I cleaned the Jhelum, the streams, and the Wular. I told people not to litter while I didn't have enough to eat myself. Now I am 23, a burden to my mother, with nothing in writing to prove I ever worked for them."

FairPlanet reached out multiple times to the Srinagar Municipal Corporation seeking an official response regarding Bilal Ahmad Dar’s case, but no reply had been received at the time of filing this report.