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- Police officers demanded free burgers from the staff at Lahore's Johnny & Jugnu fast food restaurant.
- The Pakistani workers refused the demand and were arrested last Friday night, CCTV footage shows.
- 9 police officers involved in the incident have been suspended, a local police chief said.
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The entire staff of a fast-food restaurant in Pakistan was arrested and detained overnight for refusing to give a group of police officers free burgers, according to the MailOnline.
All 19 workers at the Johnny & Jugnu chain in Lahore were held for seven hours from last Friday night until the early hours of Saturday morning, the media outlet reported.
"They kept our team locked up, harassing them, pushing them around, all for not giving them free burgers, for not entertaining a 'request from a very high profile special guest,'" the restaurant chain said in a statement on Facebook.
The restaurant workers were not given enough time to close the kitchens, the statement added. The fryers were still running and customers were left waiting for orders, Johnny & Jugnu said.
CCTV footage shows the restaurant being cleared out by police officers.
-Murtaza Ali Shah (@MurtazaViews) June 15, 2021
Nine police officers involved in the incident have since been suspended, BBC News reported.
"No one is allowed to take the law into his own hands. Injustice will not be tolerated. All of them will be punished," said Inam Ghani, a senior police official in the region.
The incident last week was "not the first time it happened and we are sure it's not going to be the last," the restaurant chain said on Facebook.
"It is very common for the police to ask for free food," the chain's chief executive, Gohar Iqbal, told The New York Times. "But what was worrying, in this case, was that the demands kept on increasing, culminating in the Friday night episode."