On a February morning in 2025, all eyes turned to a woman in green as she entered the packed courtroom in Ernakulam and walked to the bench where Judge Honey Varghese sat. The room fell silent as the woman began to speak directly to the judge, earnestly describing the physical abuse she had suffered from her former live-in partner, disregarding her lawyer’s hushed warnings.

It was only the fourth or fifth case of the day at the Principal and Sessions Court, with many more still listed. Yet Judge Honey listened patiently, giving the woman her full attention. She even allowed her to leave briefly to bring photographic evidence of the abuse.

When the woman came back and placed the photos before her, the judge – who until then had struck a balance between sternness and warmth – winced and turned her face away, clearly disturbed by the visuals.

Judge Honey Varghese recently delivered the verdict in what is without question the most high profile case of her career till date – the harrowing sexual assault of a prominent female actor on February 17, 2017.  

She convicted Pulsar Suni, a petty criminal, and five others for kidnapping and sexually assaulting the actor. She, however, acquitted prominent Malayalam actor Dileep of charges of hatching the criminal conspiracy, a verdict that will now raise questions on the fairness of the trial.

Throughout the long trial, the judge has been under as much media scrutiny as Dileep and the survivor. This is because the survivor had approached both the Kerala High Court and Supreme Court on at least three occasions, requesting that her case be transferred from Judge Honey’s court. The survivor’s appeals made it clear that she felt re-traumatised by the judge’s handling of the proceedings.

This history makes what transpired in court on that February morning all the more noteworthy. Judge Honey gave the woman who faced domestic abuse ample time and space to speak. The judge also advocated on the victim’s behalf to the defendant’s lawyers, conveying that the woman’s primary desire was for her feelings to be respected.

Honey Varghese’s empathetic approach seemed markedly different from her responses in the actor assault case.

The judge’s background, including her upbringing in a communist family and her own active involvement in the communist movement during her college years, as well as accusations of her husband’s involvement in a custodial torture case, have all been subjects of intense public and media scrutiny in recent years.

Now that the verdict is out, it is important to revisit the controversies around Judge Honey, including accusations of political bias and the long dispute in the actor assault case over her concealing a 2020 forensic report that showed that the memory card with the assault visuals had been illegally accessed.

The survivor’s battle

Honey Varghese is the daughter of MM Varghese, the former Thrissur district secretary of the CPI(M). She began her career as a junior to Advocate KB Mohandas in Thrissur, practised in the district till 2012, after which she was appointed as a District and Sessions Judge through direct recruitment. She was presiding over the CBI special court in Ernakulam when the High Court appointed her to hear the trial of the actor assault case. In November 2021, she was promoted as judge of the Ernakulam Principal and Sessions court.