President Bidya Devi Bhandari on Friday pardoned 395 convicts and those serving jail terms as per the government’s recommendation on the occasion of Democracy Day.

Pushkar Gautam, who was convicted in the insurgency-era murder of Ujjan Shrestha from Okhaldhunga, and Arun Kumar Chaudhary, a Rastriya Unmukti Party lawmaker who is in jail for setting fire to a tractor a decade ago, are among those who got the Presidential pardon on Friday.

“President Bidya Devi Bhandari has pardoned 14 people including Pushkar Gautam based on the decision of the Cabinet on Thursday,” reads one of the statements from the President’s Office. Similarly, another statement says she granted amnesty to 381 prisoners by commuting their remaining jail terms as per the Cabinet's decision.

Article 276 of the constitution allows the President to grant amnesty to prisoners as per the government’s recommendation.

Only on January 25, the Supreme Court had concluded that Gautam, an Okhaldhunga district leader of the then CPN-Maoist, was involved in the murder of Ujjan Kumar Shrestha.

A division bench of justices Bishowambhar Prasad Shrestha and Sushma Lata Mathema had upheld the 2010 verdict of the Okhaldhunga district court to sentence Gautam to life imprisonment. The district court had convicted Gautam of killing Shrestha in June 1998.

Similarly, the police on February 3 had arrested Chaudhary because he had yet to serve the jail term associated with his conviction. He was absconding for a decade now, according to police. The Kailali district court in April 2013 had convicted Chaudhary for torching a tractor belonging to a private individual in August 2009. The court had imposed six months of jail along with a fine of Rs900,000 on him. He hadn’t served the jail term nor had paid the fine.