Three youths were arrested in Patna on Tuesday for looting Rs 2.7 lakh from a pizza outlet on Exhibition Road.

The robbers — identified as former Dominos employee Anshu Kumari, 22, her boyfriend Mohammed Akil and friend Bharat Vikas — robbed the eatery on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday. Armed with guns, they overpowered at least five people.

An FIR was lodged at Gandhi Maidan police station an hour after the incident and the police nabbed the three from different parts of Patna within hours.

“Anshu and Vikas used to work at the outlet till mid-2010. So they planned and executed the robbery efficiently,” said senior superintendent of police Manu Maharaj.

A resident of the Sipara area, Anshu told her parents that she would be going to a friend’s birthday party and would not return home on Monday night. Akil, a resident of the Phulwari area, got three firearms — two countrymade pistols and a mini rifle.

Reaching the outlet around 1am, Anshu hit the guard with the butt of the rifle. The four employees inside were held at gunpoint as the trio collected the money and escaped. In an attempt to destroy evidence, they smashed the closed-circuit television camera at the outlet.

Their run, however, ended within hours as a special police team picked up Vikas from his home in Malsalami. The others were arrested based on information obtained from him, and Rs 2.36 lakh was recovered from them.

Anshu, a student of the College of Commerce, said: “I urgently needed the money and got involved in the robbery.”