All 19 employees at a fast food restaurant were arrested and detained for refusing to give local police officers free burgers. Staff at Johnny & Jugnu in Lahore, Pakistan were taken into custody at roughly 1 a.m. on Saturday, June 11 and held overnight before they were eventually released without charge, BBC News reports.
لاہور – ایس ایچ او ڈیفنس سی کو نجی ریسٹورنٹ کے عملے کو حراست میں لینے کے واقعے پر آئی جی پنجاب کا نوٹس، ایس ایچ او حماد اختر ملوث عملہ سمیت معطل۔ قانون کوہاتھ میں لینےکی اجازت کسی کو نہیں، واقعہ میں ملوث تمام اہلکاروں کوسزا دی جائے گی۔ انعام غنی@InamGhani @OfficialDPRPP pic.twitter.com/k0PV3VLRCn
— Mansoor Azam Qazi (@MansoorAzamQazi) June 13, 2021
- Sadly, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Arrests of innocent employees who refuse police requests for free meals happen all too often at the restaurant, according to a statement released by the chain. “This is not the first time something like this has happened… at our restaurant,” the statement read. How disgusting is that?
- All nine officers involved have been suspended. Senior provincial police official Inam Ghani said the force takes inappropriate action like this seriously and announced the officers’ suspension on Twitter. “No one is allowed to take the law into his own hands,” he wrote. “Injustice will not be tolerated. All of them will be punished.”
- There was a lead-up to this ridiculous incident. Johnny & Jingu revealed in a Facebook post that a group of officers had come into the restaurant a few days before the arrest asking for free burgers but were refused at that time as well. “Upon rejecting their request for free burgers, which has become a common practice for them, the police officers threatened our managers and left, only to return the next day to further harass and pressurize our teams… with baseless arguments,” the statement said.
- On June 11, everything came to a head. As the chain recalled, “Some police officers came to our… outlet and took our manager into custody, without giving any reason whatsoever. Then they emptied out our entire branch, taking all of our kitchen crew, including the rest of the managers.” They added that the restaurant staff wasn’t even allowed to close the kitchen and were arrested with “fryers still running, customers waiting for their orders.”
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has been calling for reform against the “cronies” working in the Punjab region police force. It’s clear that hasn’t happened yet.
