Based on the story of Manisha, a homeless mentally-ill woman who met with an untimely end in a mental hospital, this article raises questions about the cultural practices of the scientific-medical paradigm, the state legal system, and society that allows a vulnerable woman to vanish without a trace. It ponders the ways in which we can talk about the cultures of violence even in apparently benevolent institutions, and how science and the law are complicit in the violence that takes place in the name of helping the helpless.
