In Criminal Justice (Season 1) — the Indian HBO Hotstar series — the killer is Mukesh, the driver of the car involved in the hit-and-run.
Mukesh was driving the luxury car that fatally struck a sex worker, Poonam. However, the protagonist Aditya Sharma (played by Vikrant Massey) is initially arrested and tried for the murder, while Mukesh later confesses to being the actual killer during the trial.
If you’re here only for the answer and don’t need the literary analysis:
So, who was the killer in Criminal Justice season 1? Melanie, the forgotten student.
But here is the cruel irony of the show’s ending: Ben is released from prison after Melanie confesses. He walks free, but he is broken—addicted, paranoid, and alienated from his family. The final shot of Ben walking past his father’s cab stand is not triumphant; it’s hollow. who was the killer in criminal justice season 1
Melanie, on the other hand, is not necessarily sent to prison for life. Due to her mental state, she is institutionalized. The “criminal justice” of the title is shown to be a lottery: a guilty person goes free (technically), an innocent one is nearly destroyed, and the real killer receives sympathy.
Before revealing the killer, let’s revisit the setup. Season 1 follows Ben Coulter (played by Ben Whishaw), a young, aimless man living in London. One night, he borrows his father’s cab to impress a mysterious, beautiful passenger named Lydia Miller (Anne Frank-narrator Saskia Reeves). After a night of sex and drugs, Ben wakes up in Lydia’s bed, covered in blood, with Lydia brutally stabbed to death beside him.
He runs. He panics. He gets caught.
For the next four episodes, the series meticulously builds a case against Ben. His lawyer (Pete Postlethwaite), his barrister, and the audience all begin to suspect that maybe—just maybe—Ben blacked out and committed the murder himself. But Criminal Justice is smarter than that. In Criminal Justice (Season 1) — the Indian
In a devastating twist during the final episode, we learn that Bipin Rath, Sanaya’s wealthy, controlling father, is the one who stabbed his own daughter to death.
Bipin doesn’t confess out of guilt or a moral awakening. He confesses only after his pregnant younger daughter (Sanaya’s sister) learns the truth and threatens to expose him. Realizing he will lose both daughters, and under immense pressure from his family’s lawyer (who warns him that Aditya will get the death penalty for a crime he didn’t commit), Bipin finally breaks down in court.
In a chilling courtroom scene, Jackie Shroff delivers a haunting monologue as Bipin admits to the murder, revealing his twisted logic: “I gave her life. I had the right to take it.”
Warning: Major spoilers for Criminal Justice: Season 1 (BBC One / HBO’s The Night Of) ahead. The killer: Melanie, a student from Lydia’s writing class
If you’ve just finished the first season of the gritty legal drama Criminal Justice (originally created by Peter Moffat for the BBC, later adapted by HBO as The Night Of), you’re likely still processing the overwhelming tension, the moral ambiguity, and the central question that drives the entire plot: Who was the killer?
On the surface, the story follows Adil “Adeel” Akhtar (played by Riz Ahmed in the UK version, and Naz Khan in the US adaptation), a young British-Pakistani man who wakes up to find a woman brutally murdered beside him after a night of drugs and sex. He is arrested, charged, and put on trial for her murder. But as the season unfolds, it becomes painfully clear that nothing in Criminal Justice is as simple as it seems.
So, let’s settle the mystery once and for all. Who actually killed Andrea Cornish (or, in the BBC original, Debbie Pemberton)?
Once Bipin confesses, Aditya is acquitted of all murder charges. However, he is not completely free. He is convicted for drug possession (the cocaine found in his system) and for fleeing the scene (though he was unconscious, the court holds him partially responsible). He serves a short sentence but is ultimately released—a broken, traumatized man who has lost years of his life.