A 12-year-old girl returning home from tuition was run over by a bus on Wednesday morning while crossing the Bypass through a gap in the barricades for Metro construction near the Ruby rotary.

Rita Sardar, a student of Class V at Sucheta Nagar Balika Vidyamandir in Haltu, was knocked down by a state-run bus on route 007 - Chitpur to Garia - around 8.40am. The accident site, known as Mandirpara, is around 200 metres from the Ruby General Hospital roundabout.

Rita's death triggered a blockade on the Bypass for around half an hour from 10am, disrupting office-going traffic on the stretch from Ruby hospital to the Prince Anwar Shah Road connector. The ripple effect of the blockade was felt till around 11am.

Rita's friends were on the other side of the road when the tragedy occurred, witnesses said. "She would go for tuition (to a teacher's house in the RR Plot) at 7am and return home by 9am to get ready for school at 10.30am," Rita's maternal uncle Babushona Adhikari said.

Rita lived with her uncle and grandmother close to the accident site while her younger sister and brother live with their parents in Anandapur. Her father Prabir is an autorickshaw driver.

The Bypass has been in its worst shape this monsoon, with some stretches broken and several barricaded for construction of the New Garia-Airport Metro and the Parama-Park Circus flyover. The gap in the barricades through which the 12-year-old had tried to cross the road had allegedly been created at the behest of residents living on either side of the Bypass.

Adhikari blamed lack of policing for his niece's death, saying a traffic signal or a post at Mandirpara was urgently required to help pedestrians cross the busy road. "We have long been requesting the police to set up a signal so that we can cross the road safely. Since there isn't one, accidents occur frequently," he said.

But those driving down the Bypass every day complain that what was supposed to be a speed corridor has been reduced to a start-stop-start stretch thanks to the mushrooming of traffic signals and crossover points.

In the absence of a traffic signal at Mandirpara, it isn't unusual for buses and other vehicles to speed once they get past the Ruby crossing so that they can beat the red light at the Prince Anwar Shah Road connector, around a kilometre away.

The police said it wasn't possible for them to deploy personnel at every random gap in the barricades. "We have marked all places along the Metro construction zone where there is a crossover. But it is difficult to keep tabs on gaps created by residents according to their convenience," said a traffic officer.

Rita's death triggered a blockade on the Bypass for around half an hour from 10am, disrupting traffic on the stretch from Ruby hospital to the Prince Anwar Shah Road connector.

"If there is a cut in the barricades, there is a tendency among people to use it rather than walk some distance to cross the road safely at the designated spot," said Madhurima Dutta, a resident of RR Plot.

Rita lived with her uncle and grandmother close to the accident site while her younger sister and brother live with their parents in Anandapur. Her father Prabir is an autorickshaw driver.