A 20-year-old University of Pittsburgh student who vanished from a five-star resort in the Dominican Republic likely didn't drown on the beach as some reports have suggested, according to the private investigator who went to Aruba following the disappearance of Natalee Holloway under similar circumstances in 2005.

Sudiksha Konanki, who was born in India but is a legal permanent U.S. resident from Virginia, was last seen entering the beach early Thursday morning at the Riu Republica Resort in Punta Cana, according to La Policia Nacional, the country's national police force. She was with a friend who is currently under investigation, according to a translation of a Spanish-language statement.

"I don't think that she drowned in the ocean," said TJ Ward, the private investigator who worked for Holloway's parents after she vanished on a trip she went on with high school classmates to celebrate graduation. "I totally believe that somebody knows something where she is, or somebody took her away, or somebody's holding her somewhere."



Sudiksha Konanki, who was born in India but is a legal permanent U.S. resident from Virginia, was last seen on March 6 at a resort beach in Punta Cana.

Her whereabouts remain unknown, but  reported Monday that she may have drowned, citing law enforcement sources.

Ward rejected that theory, and Dominican police have said they are investigating one of Konanki's friends and looking to corroborate claims from a "young man" who was also in the water that night. They have questioned multiple witnesses, including her friends.



"If she had gone into the water, she would’ve washed up somewhere with a tide the way that comes into the island," Ward said.

Authorities have searched by land, air and sea, and he said a body in the water would likely have been discovered unless someone took her far offshore.

Konanki's family is also skeptical of reports she may have drowned, according to , a Washington-based outlet.

"There’s problems there with assaults, kidnappings and so on and so forth," he told Fox News Digital. "Young people just don't understand the theory about what's going on in these other countries, and they think they can go away because they can drink and party and at a younger age and get away with it and do things that they couldn't do here in the U.S."

There are "major problems" in the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean nations, he said.

In a complaint filed with Dominican authorities asking them to investigate a potential drowning as well as the possibility of kidnapping or foul play, the elder Konanki said his daughter's phone and wallet were left with her friends, which he said was "unusual," according to the outlet.

Attempts to reach him from Fox News Digital were unsuccessful Monday.

Konanki was on a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic with five female classmates, authorities said previously.

She arrived on March 3 and was last seen around 4:15 a.m. on March 6, on surveillance video, headed onto the beach with her friends, according to local police.

Konanki's disappearance does share some similarities with Holloway's. Both young women traveled to a Caribbean beach resort with classmates. Both vanished on the beach at night, staying out late after their friends went back to their respective hotels. Holloway's case came to a gruesome conclusion last year after a suspect, Joran van der Sloot, confessed to killing her nearly two decades after the fact.

, according to authorities. She is 5 feet, 3 inches tall, with black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a brown bikini, hoop earrings, bracelets and an anklet.

A spokesperson for the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office also told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the report that Konanki drowned may be "based on her last known location near the beach, but  no evidence to support that conclusion at this time."



_Fox News' Greg Norman and Michael Dorgan contributed to this report._
```