Recently, social media was abuzz with the news of the detention of the entire staff — comprising 19 workers — of a fast food joint in Phase 6, DHA, Lahore, by the local police. Their crime was that they had refused to give the cops burgers ‘for free’.

As the story goes, in the afternoon of June 11, the staff of Johnny & Jugnu were rounded up by the police and locked up overnight at the local police station. The restaurant administration took to their official page on Facebook, and related the incident. According to them, two days prior to the incident, a group of policemen came up and demanded free burgers. When they were refused, they came back after two days, this time to harass the staff and, eventually, arrest them.

The cops forced them to leave everything as it was, “leaving behind unattended kitchens, with our fryers still running, customers waiting for their orders,” reads the admin’s official statement.

The staff members were allegedly detained for seven hours, harassed and mistreated, purely because they had “refused to entertain a request from a very high-profile special guest.”

This is just one of the many incidents that depict the shameless abuse of power by the law enforcers, knowing full well that they will not have to face any real consequences. It is heart-breaking, to say the least, to see how broken and corrupt the systems in our country are. Young workers trying to earn a decent living do not deserve to be subjected to this kind of treatment for literally no reason at all. Not only did a significant amount of food go to waste that night, but the unattended kitchen could have also burned down causing damage that would have been huge.

It is heart-breaking, to say the least, to see how broken and corrupt the systems in our country are. Young workers trying to earn a decent living do not deserve to be subjected to this kind of treatment for literally no reason at all.

Once the post went viral and people including other fast food businesses came forward in support of Johnny & Jugnu, the Punjab Police fired the SHO and announced on Twitter: “IG Inam Ghani has taken notice of the Johnny and Jugnu restaurant incident and suspended the Defence SHO and the police staff involved. No one is allowed to take law into their own hands. Injustice will not be tolerated. All of them will be punished.”

Saman Bashir, the head of marketing for Johnny & Jugnu, praised the action taken by the police. In a social media post, she said, “We spoke out to the public about what had happened, and within two hours maybe we had received a response from the authorities. We are glad that people stood up to support us; that is the silver lining.”

Indeed, it is heartening that action was taken by the authorities. Let’s hope that it wasn’t given under pressure alone, and that it is not revoked once the attention and the hype die down.

The incident is yet another proof of how powerful social media has become and what it can do to bring about a positive change. However, the question remains whether in order to get something done we need to go viral first.

The writer is a communications manager at a private company. She can be reached at saniyanasir3@gmail.com