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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her photograph was displayed over the news in an allegation about reported election fraud, has explained that she initially thought it was all a error. Or a prank.

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 prank. But then many people started messaging at the same time and I realised it was actually happening."

Nery, who resides in Belo Horizonte, the main urban center of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has never been to India, says she searched on Google to comprehend what was going on.

The Events That Transpired

What had occurred was the fallout of a media briefing by Indian political figure Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday where he alleged 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 denied the allegations.

Some time after the press conference, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they claimed they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an oath with the names of unqualified voters "in order that necessary actions could be started". They did not reply to the particular allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of claims of "electoral fraud" against the poll panel since early August.

In his latest claims, he said his team had examined 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, multiple registrations and invalid addresses. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged manipulation of the voters' list.

To demonstrate his claims, he showed a number of slides on a big screen. One of them showed Gandhi standing 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 images.

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

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

The Truth Behind the Image

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

She explained 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 photograph of me".

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

"I became scared. I cannot determine if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is correct or incorrect because I do not know the groups involved," she said.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many reporters 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 spoke to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is affecting me in my career."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also swamped by the unexpected attention. Until recently, 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 respond. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he explained. "I thought it was a scam. I ignored and reported it."

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

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I deactivated 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 placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. "Individuals were making memes, like transforming it into a game show joke. It's ridiculous."

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 uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"The photo became viral… reached around 57 million impressions," he said.

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 removed them out of fear, because the photos were being improperly used. I got scared imagining this happening to other people I shot. I felt violated. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The platform was accessible and I uploaded like millions of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos restricted.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you panic. The first response is to shut everything down and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Events

Neither Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that occurred at the other end of the world could turn their lives upside down.

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

"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 distant from my everyday life. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."