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

But then her online profiles blew up and people started tagging her on Instagram.

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

Nery, who resides in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has not once been to India, says she searched on Google to comprehend what was happening.

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 engaging in voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has denied the claims.

Some time after the press conference, the election authority of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an oath with the names of ineligible voters "so that necessary actions could be initiated". They did not respond to the particular allegations he made and did not provide statements on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of claims of "electoral fraud" against the poll panel 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 invalid addresses. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported manipulation of the voters' list.

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

"Who is this lady? How old is she? She votes 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi said.

He explained that a solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly across multiple voter entries under different names. He referred to Nery as a model who had appeared on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

The Truth Behind the Photo

The 29-year-old verified that it was certainly 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, "thought I was pretty and asked to take photos of me".

Now years later, all the attention in the past two days from "individuals from India, many of them reporters", has left her scared.

"I felt fear. I cannot determine if it is dangerous for me or if talking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong because I do not know the groups involved," she expressed.

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

"I needed to delete the salon name from my profile because they were bothering my workplace. My boss even talked to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Camera Artist's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the unexpected attention. Until not long ago, he says India meant only Caminho das Índias - the 2009 Brazilian primetime show - to him.

He's still trying to understand 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 seen this friend in years," he said. "I believed it was a scam. I blocked and flagged it."

But since Gandhi's media appearance, "the situation have exploded".

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I deactivated my Instagram to try to comprehend what was going on. Later I googled and realised what was happening, but at first I had no clue."

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

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

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

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

"I deleted them out of concern, because the photos were being improperly used. I got frightened imagining this occurring to other people I shot. I felt violated. A lot of random people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The website was accessible and I uploaded like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos restricted.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you become alarmed. The first reaction is to close all accounts and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Events

Not one of Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that happened at the far side of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When asked if all this helped reveal electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

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

Nery who has never left the country says: "This situation is far from my everyday life. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, much less in another country."