The body of 23-year-old Aliya Bulkan was successfully retrieved from a pond at the foot of Kaieteur Falls yesterday afternoon bringing an end to days of hard work and trekking through extremely rough terrain by Special Forces ranks of the Guyana Defence Force.
Police in a statement yesterday confirmed that the body was recovered and brought to the city and is currently at Sandy’s Funeral Parlour awaiting a post-mortem examination.
Bulkan plunged off the falls on Saturday last.
Meanwhile, acknowledging that the process was not an easy one, Chief of Staff, Commodore Gary Best told Stabroek News that the army had always remained confident that they would have gotten to the body.
“We did a risk assessment and so we decided that there was no need to use the helicopter at the risk of losing it and so the final take was that we go in on foot,” he explained. The army on Monday had set up a base at the top of the falls and on Tuesday the body was spotted.
They then journeyed to the foot of the falls and at one time experienced some difficulties and had to return to base. The next day the team journeyed back to the foot of the falls and worked tirelessly until they reached the body.
Best said the team carried ropes to the spot and the body was placed in a body bag and then pulled up to the top.
The young woman’s father was there at the scene throughout the whole process.
Aliya was part of a nine-member tour group who went to visit Kaieteur Falls.
Roraima Airways proprietor Captain Gerald Gouveia whose enterprise transported the group to the falls had told reporters following the incident on Saturday last that the tour was almost at an end when a Korean woman alerted everyone that Aliya had leapt over the falls.
Gouveia had reported that the girl was screaming as she leapt and this newspaper reported accordingly. However according to the girl’s mother Kamini Bulkan, Lisa Ahmad, the friend who accompanied Aliya on the trip recounted that it was only when they realized that Aliya was missing that the Korean woman who was crying said she saw her leap over the falls.
Meanwhile Kamini Bulkan also informed this newspaper that contrary to a report in yesterday’s Stabroek News her daughter and the teenager Lisa Prashad who committed suicide on Wednesday night had not been friends. However she and the mother of the teen had been in the same club and since Aliya’s incident she has attended the wake at the family’s New Providence home.
