The Birbhum district administration on Tuesday stopped an “illegal” construction that was being carried out in Santiniketan allegedly by encroaching on the bank of a river that was named Kopai by Rabindranath Tagore.

A source alleged that a Calcutta-based real estate agency was setting up a temple and a resort encroaching on the bank of the river without the required permission from the local body or the state government.

A few local people, including academics and social workers of Santiniketan, had recently spotted the “illegal construction” and complained to the administration. They said the work was enough to change the natural course of the river — a destination for tourists visiting the town.

On Tuesday, a team of officials of the state government’s land and irrigation departments and Birbhum district magistrate Bidhan Ray visited the site to find out whether the construction was going on by encroaching on the riverbank. After the primary investigation, Ray asked workers to stop the construction till further order.

“There is a claim that the construction was on the private land. We will examine it. However, the river should have its natural course and no one can obstruct it. I have asked my officials to halt the work till the probe is over. We will take stern action against those accused of encroaching on the river as soon as the probe is over,” said Ray.

Asked whether the construction agency required permission from the local body, Ray said it would be verified.

The action came after a group of people, including academics and social workers, launched a protest near the construction site on Sunday under the banner of Santiniketan Khoai Sahitya O Sanskriti Samity and started collecting signatures of significant persons from in and around Santiniketan.

“We will send a letter with signatures of hundreds of people who love the small river to chief minister Mamata Banerjee, informing her about the crisis the famous river has been facing. We want the river to be freed from any kind of encroachment.

“We are hopeful that she will take action to stop any kind of illegal activities that have been harming the sanctity of the tiny river,” said Kishore Bhattacharya, the secretary of the outfit.

A source said although the particular construction was massive, encroaching on the bank of the small river started rising in the past five years when many real estate agencies and local promoters began setting up hotels and resorts on the Kopai’s banks. “The pilferage of sand and earth from the riverbed is rampant and cannot be stopped even after so many complaints because of the alleged involvement of the influencing people,” said the source.

A senior official said the administration would also check the papers of the existing constructions, both permanent and temporary, to find out whether those also encroached on the river bank.

Malay Mukhopadhyay, a retired geography professor of Visva-Bharati and a river researcher who walked twice along the 110km-long river Kopai from its source in Jharkhand to its confluence in Birbhum with his students and researchers, claimed that the recent trend of encroachment was affecting the natural course of the Kopai.

“I travelled along the river from its source to the confluence first in 1991 and again in 2017. I found how the number of brick kilns increased along the small stretch of the river and different forms of encroachments. But this particular construction is massive and enough to ruin the Kopai,” said Mukhopadhyay.

“We should not forget that tourists, especially those from abroad, visit Santiniketan to see the Kopai river as it was named so by Rabindranath Tagore who also penned a poem Kopai.... I am also part of the protest as I want the encroachers to let our beloved small river flow,” he added.