Daily US Times: All staff at a fast food restaurant in Pakistan were arrested last week after refusing to give a group of police officers free burgers.
Staff at the chain Johnny & Jugnu in Lahore were rounded up at 01:00 on Saturday and held overnight.
A statement by the burger chain said: “This is not the first time something like this has happened… at our restaurant.”
Nine police officers involved in the incident have been suspended by authorities.
Inam Ghani, senior provincial police official, announced the suspensions on Twitter, saying: “No one is allowed to take the law into his own hands. Injustice will not be tolerated. All of them will be punished.”
Johnny & Jugnu said in a statement posted on Facebook that a group of police officers had gone to the restaurant two days before the incident and asked for free burgers.
The statement said: “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 pressurise our teams… with baseless arguments.”
The statement added that on 11 June, “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”.
The restaurant also said the staff were not allowed to close down the kitchen, according to the statement, leaving “fryers still running, customers waiting for their orders”.
The workers were detained for seven hours and they said the officers were “harassing them, pushing them around, all for not giving them free burgers”.
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