With NLF dismantled and PF demoralised, Maqbool Butt once again crossed over to the Indian occupied Kashmir against the advice of many of his friends and comrades in May 1976. This time he went with Abdul Hammed Butt and Riaz Dar. Within few days of crossing they were spotted and arrested by the Indian forces. In 1978 the Indian Supreme Court restored death sentence on Maqbool Butt and he was transferred to Delhi’s Tihaar Prison. After eight long years in prison Maqbool Butt was hanged on 11th February 1984 while the legal team was waiting for Maqbool Butt’s case to be reopened on the grounds of flaws in the trial that convicted Maqbool Butt of murder. His execution was carried out in haste to avenge the killing of an Indian diplomat in Birmingham by an unknown group ‘Kashmir Liberation Army’. Rovendra Mahatre was kidnapped in the first week of February 1984 from his Birmingham office by KLA who demanded among other things the release of Maqbool Butt. Thus was ended the life of one of the greatest revolutionary of modern Kashmiri history and was born what Kashmiris remember as Shaheed e Azam (the greatest martyr). Ironically, death warrants of Maqbool Butt were signed by Dr Farooq Abdullah the then Chief Minister of IOK who spent several days with Maqbool Butt in ‘Azad’ Kashmir and Pakistan in 1974 and who said later that ‘I have found Maqbool Butt a very romantic man, just like Che Guevara. He could have added ‘like Shiekh Abdullah in 1930s’, whose politics initially inspired Maqbool Butt as a student at St Joseph College.