Police officers in Lahore arrest at least nineteen workers of a fast-food chain after they refused to give free burgers.
Police arrested the staff on Saturday night. “This is not the first time something like this has happened… at our restaurant,” a statement by the burger chain said. However, authorities have suspended the nine police officers involved in the incident.
IG Punjab Inam Ghani have taken notice of the Johnny and Jugnu restaurant incident and have suspended the SHO Defence C and the staff of the police station involved. No one is allowed to take law into his own hands. Injustice will not be tolerated. All of them will be punished.
— Punjab Police Official (@OfficialDPRPP) June 12, 2021
The fast-food chain, Johnny & Jugnu, had released its statement on a Facebook page in which they narrated the entire incident. The food chain said that the police officers had been harassing their staff for a few days. They had come to the restaurant to ask for free burgers two days before the incident.
“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 11 June, it said, “some police officers came to our… outlet and took our manager into custody, without giving any reason whatsoever. Then they emptied our entire branch, taking all of our kitchen crew, including the rest of the managers”.
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The restaurant added that the police officer did not allow the worker to switch off the fryers with other customers waiting for their orders. It further read that the police detained workers for seven hours during which the officers “harassing them, pushing them around, all for not giving them free burgers”.
Inspector General Punjab Police directed the CCPO Lahore to take strict action against the police officer on the charges of abuse of power. He further said that the “officers and personnel involved in illegal activities do not deserve any concession so no leniency should be given in taking action against those responsible after the inquiry.”
A special thanks to SSP Ops @ahsan_saifullah who was one of the first few people to reach out to us and assure that justice will be served. We need more people in the force like him, who are ready to help common people like us to get justice.
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— Johnny & Jugnu (@itsstillCalu) June 12, 2021