A judge who spared an aspiring Oxford University student from jail after she stabbed her boyfriend has been investigated over three complaints relating to the case.

Ian Pringle QC gave would-be heart surgeon Lavinia Woodward a suspended sentence for attacking her then partner in a drunken assault.

Woodward, 24, stabbed her Cambridge University boyfriend in the leg with a bread knife but in an unusual move the judge spared her jail describing her as an “extraordinarily able young lady”, whose talents meant that a prison sentence would be “too severe”.

The judge sentenced her to a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, on Monday after she admitted unlawful wounding.