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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her image was splashed over the news in an allegation about reported election fraud, has told that she initially thought it was all a mistake. Or a joke.

But then her online profiles exploded with activity and people started tagging her on Instagram.

"Initially it was a few random messages. I thought they were mistaking me for someone else," she said. "Later they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some joke. But then lots of people started contacting at the same time and I understood it was actually happening."

Nery, who lives in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has never been to India, says she searched on Google to understand what was going on.

What Transpired

What had occurred was the fallout of a press conference by Indian political figure Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday where he accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party BJP and the Election Commission (EC) of committing voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has rejected the claims.

Some time after the press conference, the election authority of Haryana shared a letter they claimed they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an declaration with the names of unqualified voters "so that necessary proceedings could be initiated". They did not reply to the specific allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of accusations of "electoral fraud" against the election authority since early August.

In his most recent claims, he said his team had looked through the Election Commission's voter list data and found that of the approximately 20 million voters, 2.5 million were problematic registrations - including repeated entries, bulk voters and incorrect locations. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported manipulation of the voters' list.

To prove his claims, he showed a number of slides on a big screen. One of them showed Gandhi positioned in front of a large image of Nery, while another showed a collection of 22 voters with various names and addresses but all with her photos.

"Who is this woman? What age is she? She casts ballots 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi stated.

He clarified that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used multiple times across numerous voter entries under various names. He described Nery as a model who had been listed on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

The Reality Behind the Photo

The 29-year-old verified that it was indeed her in the photograph. "Absolutely. It is me. Considerably younger, but it is me. I am the individual in the images."

She clarified that she was a stylist and not a model and that the photo was taken in March 2017 when she was 21, just outside her home. The photographer, she said, "found me attractive and asked to take photos of me".

Now years later, all the focus in the past two days from "people from India, many of them journalists", has left her frightened.

"I became scared. I cannot tell if it is risky for me or if talking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is correct or wrong because I do not know the parties involved," she said.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many journalists were calling me. They located the number of the place where I work.

"I had to remove the salon name from my profile because they were disturbing my workplace. My boss even spoke to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Camera Artist's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the unexpected attention. Until recently, he says India meant only Caminho das Índias - the 2009 Brazilian television series - to him.

He's still trying to make sense of the events of the last few days in a country a great distance away.

Some people had reached out to him from India a week back, asking him who the woman in the photo was, he stated.

"I didn't reply. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't been in contact with this friend in years," he explained. "I thought it was a scam. I ignored and reported it."

But since Gandhi's press conference, "the situation have exploded".

"Individuals were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I disabled my Instagram to try to comprehend what was going on. Later I googled and understood what was occurring, but at first I had no clue."

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals were creating jokes, like transforming it into a game show joke. It's absurd."

In 2017, Ferrero was just starting out as a photographer when he asked Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photo session. Ferrero said he posted the photos on his Facebook and also uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

"The photo blew up… reached around 57 million impressions," he stated.

He has now deleted the link from his Unsplash account but he shared screenshots taken earlier that showed other photos of Nery from the same shoot.

"I deleted them out of concern, because the photos were being improperly used. I got frightened imagining this happening to other people I shot. I felt invaded. A lot of unknown people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform was accessible and I posted like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos restricted.

"When you see people entering your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you panic. The first reaction is to close all accounts and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Events

Not one of Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that occurred at the far side of the world could turn their lives upside down.

When questioned if all this contributed to uncover electoral fraud, would that be positive?

"Yes, I think that would be positive. But I don't truly know the specifics," he said.

Nery who has not once left the country says: "This situation is far from my reality. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."