A developer has been arrested for allegedly constructing a building illegally in Baguiati, police said.

Mahesh Das was arrested on Thursday based on a complaint lodged by the Bidhananagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on August 5, the police said

“A sub-assistant engineer of the civic body had filed the complaint with Baguiati police station. According to the complaint, Das had continued with the construction
of the five-storey building even after being served a stop-work notice,” said a police officer.

A BMC official said Das even did not submit the building plan to the civic body before staring its construction.

Owners and developers of buildings must submit their building plans to the civic body before starting construction.

The construction can start only after the building plan is sanctioned by the civic body, a senior official of the BMC’s building plan department said.

The civic body checks whether the person who has submitted the building plan has the title of the land on which the structure is coming up and whether the plot belongs to any category where construction is not allowed.

According to the BMC official, the stop-work notice was issued last year but Das had not stopped work.

The official said the building was coming up on BF-157 in Prafulla Kanan’s Rabindrapally.

On Friday, the civic body pasted notices on the buildings labelling it as an unauthorised construction.

“We will send demolition teams but first we need to check the state of the other buildings around the site and take adequate measures to ensure that no other building gets damaged during the demolition,” an official of the civic body said.

Jhunku Mandal, the councillor of Ward 23, where the illegal construction
was coming up, said they took prompt action against Das for not adhering to building rules laid down by the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation.

“What he was doing was illegal and we took steps against it. We will soon decide on
when to send demolition teams to the spot. We are now considering the safety of
residents who live in buildings around the plot,” said Mandal.

Das, the accused, was produced before a court in Barasat that sent him to judicial custody for 14 days, the police said.