VENDETTA as politics in West Bengal has used fear through violence manifested in verbal and physical intimidation, threats, trashing and wrecking offices, homes, villages, streets, burning and looting, attacks and assaults on individuals and groups, even groups of protesters, police and institutions to uproot dissent and demolish the opposition. The cost of persisting in opposing the reigning Trinamool Congress has been homelessness, because people have been driven out of their homes after these were ransacked and/or burnt, loss of livelihoods as people allied to the opposition have been denied work, and escalating insecurity and everyday terror. The management of organised violence has evolved since 2011, after the Trinamool Congress won the elections and took over the reins. Encouraged by the role of the government in promoting “area domination” by the Trinamool Congress, through transforming the instruments of governance, namely the police and the administration, into either passive agents or active promoters, often prosecuting the victim instead of the attacker, local leaderships of the ruling party felt safe and free to pursue planned and random violence against a defenceless population. Resistance, either by a community acting spontaneously or by opposition, was faced with a moral dilemma. To aggressively repel the excesses of the ruling regime would provoke more violence and distress, whereas to passively resist would be a retreat in the face of Trinamool Congress violence. For the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the demoralisation of election defeat was compounded by the predicament of protecting its members, sympathisers and supporters from the targeted violence by the ruling regime, comprising the government and the machinery of governance. Government and governance in West Bengal has deteriorated to a point where the rule of law has no meaning. The police have become party to criminal acts by the ruling party and accompany Trinamool Congress cadres on the rampage. Kidnap, torture, and sexual violation perpetrated on Hifunnesa Bibi from Sattor village in Parui block of Birbhum district in West Bengal on the night of January 18, 2015 is a heinous act by despicable persons against an innocent woman. In her statement to the National Women’s Commission team that met her at her home, the survivor spoke of the horrifying acts of torture and sexual violence, tantamount to gang rape, in which the police was actively involved. She was the target of violence because the police evidently felt duty bound to support the perpetrators from the Trinamool Congress on their mission of vendetta against her nephew in Birbhum district. Failing to find him, the police and Trinamool Congress cadres picked up Hifunnesa Bibi from her home in Burdwan and took her into the forest, where they tied her to a tree, slashed her with razors and sexually assaulted her by scouring her body with nettle leaves. It is evident from the actions taken by the Superintendent of Police, Birbhum that the police were part of the assault and were aiders and abettors of the despicable group comprising Trinamool Congress cadres. Policemen suspended or asked to show cause for what is evidently their presence and perhaps participation in the kidnap and torture of the woman include Kartik Mohan Ghosh, officer-in-charge of the special operations group, Dipak Bauri, Kashinath Das, Sub Divisional Police Officer Amlankusum Ghosh and eight others. The question that needs an answer from the government is, will these policemen face exemplary punishment that will send a message across the administration or will these culprits like other occasions get off lightly and return to work to do the same thing? The template for governance in West Bengal is the Madhyamgram gang rape case, where the victim was gang-raped again after she lodged a complaint of the first gang rape with the police. The rapists in Madhyamgram evidently believed that the victim and the police could be deterred from pursuing the case, because as perpetrators of crime they enjoyed an indemnity for their actions. If the government of West Bengal did not respond to the clear signs of breakdown of order and the flagrant disregard for the law by criminals evident in the Madhyamgram case, it is unlikely that it can restore its authority now. Women have become the most vulnerable section of the population as politics by the Trinamool Congress has used their bodies as a battle ground. Monstrous acts of violence, abuse, torture and intimidation have been unleashed against women in an unparalleled exercise of punishing the common man from deploying the freedoms they and women, indeed every adult and citizen irrespective of age and gender, caste or class, faith or ethnicity, is guaranteed under the Constitution of India. The blatant disregard of laws and the rules by which the police force is administered in Kalna, Sattor, Kamduni, Parui and a hundred other incidents cannot be explained away as a unique instances of extraordinary abuse of power. The police has in recent times become a party to various acts of violence by the Trinamool Congress cadres, particularly in Birbhum as well as across the state. Crimes have registered a steep increase in West Bengal over the past three years. Crimes against women have registered a terrifying upward trend making this one of the least safe places in India for women. Atrocities against political rivals, rebels from within and critics by the ruling regime has cascaded out of control. The steady increase in such crimes has been disregarded by the government which has defended the police and its actions, maintaining that law and order in West Bengal is exemplary. If this was indeed so then Moushumi Koyal, once a housewife in Kamduni, would not have turned an activist and one of the group that describes itself as Akranto Amra (We, under attack) that now travels to meet victims of ruling party terror. The list of innocent citizens who have become victims grows longer and longer as vendetta politics spreads in a desperate attempt to restore Trinamool Congress supremacy in West Bengal. Within the fortress that Mamata Banerjee has erected with the Trinamool Congress supporters guarding the ramparts nothing is amiss in the state of West Bengal. If civil society has attempted to counter the dominant narrative of the Trinamool Congress, that all is well after 'Paribartan', by drawing attention to the spreading violence and growing fear by independently taking up specific instances of violence and leading public opinion it has had limited effect in containing it. The Trinamool Congress government has chosen to outface the condemnation by dismissing the public as either Maoists, “CPM” or trouble-making elitist intelligentsia, who refuse to recognise that the real public and its support is with the 'Maa, Mati, Manush' government, led by Mamata Banerjee. Expressions of horror and dismay at the rising rate of monstrous and brutal acts of violence against citizens, especially women by perverts and criminals, people who claim to be acting on behalf of the Trinamool Congress and/or of working as public servants will remain ineffective for as long as the government of West Bengal fails to govern. It is unprecedented that high officials of the government working in the police force have joined up with political cadres to commit atrocities against the people. Latest, a young boy was beaten to death by anti-social elements in Howrah for protesting against eve-teasing. The Chief Minister has described it as a sequel to group rivalries. This encouraged the perpetrators. This is the order of the day in West Bengal today. Power has undermined the sanctity of the government. Authority has run amok. Vendetta politics has overtaken and undermined governance. The scattered acts of resistance, by women spontaneously reacting against marauding policemen and goons of the ruling party, increase their vulnerability as a category of people whose lives can be traumatised to serve as a warning and a punishment for opposing the ruling political establishment.