Pakistani police arrest entire fast food restaurant’s staff ‘for refusing to give them free burgers’

Employees at fast food restaurant in Pakistan were arrested last week after they refused to give away free burgers to a group of police officers.

All 19 workers at Johnny & Jugnu in Lahore were reportedly arrested in the early hours of 11th June as they didn’t hand over the free food to the police, which had apparently “become common practice” for the restaurant.

In a post on Facebook, the restaurant states that their manager and entire kitchen staff were taken into custody leaving customers waiting to make orders and kitchen equipment still running.

In the statement, the restaurant claims that they were locked up and harassed for seven hours for not entertaining a “request from a very high profile special guest.”

They also claim that “this is not the first time something like this has happened at our restaurant.”

CCTV footage from the establishment shows the police rounding up the staff into a police van at just before 2 am local time.

In a statement, senior provincial police official Inam Ghani said: “No one is allowed to take the law into his own hands. Injustice will not be tolerated. All of them will be punished.” The nine police officer who were involved in the incident have also been suspended.

Imran Khan, the Pakistani prime minister has previously called for reforms to the Punjab police force, claiming that politicians in the area had appointed “cronies” as the heads of police stations in the region.