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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 claim about reported election fraud, has told that she at first thought it was all a error. Or a joke.

But then her social media exploded with activity and people started mentioning her on Instagram.

"At first it was a few scattered messages. I thought they were confusing me for someone else," she explained. "Then they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was artificial intelligence or some prank. But then many people started contacting at the same time and I realised it was real."

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 looked on Google to comprehend what was happening.

What Transpired

What had taken place was the consequence of a media briefing 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 rejected the allegations.

Hours after the media event, the election authority of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an declaration with the names of ineligible voters "in order 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 series of claims of "vote theft" against the election authority 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 irregular entries - including duplicates, multiple registrations and incorrect locations. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged tampering of the voters' list.

To demonstrate 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.

"What person is this woman? How old is she? She votes 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 different names. He described 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 verified that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Absolutely. 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, "found me attractive 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 journalists", has left her scared.

"I became scared. I cannot determine if it is risky for me or if talking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong because I do not know the groups involved," she expressed.

"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 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 in my career."

The Camera Artist's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also swamped by the unexpected attention. Until not long ago, 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 contacted 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 provide someone's name like that. And I hadn't been in contact with this friend in years," he explained. "I thought it was a fraud. I ignored and flagged it."

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

"Individuals were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I disabled my Instagram to try to understand what was happening. Later I googled and understood what was happening, but at first I had no clue."

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

In 2017, Ferrero was just beginning his career 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 consent.

"The photo became viral… reached around 57 million views," 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 removed them out of concern, because the photos were being misused. I got frightened 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 website was accessible and I posted like millions of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you become alarmed. The first response is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Life Changing Events

Neither Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that occurred at the far side of the world could dramatically change their lives.

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

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

Nery who has not once left the country says: "This situation is far from my everyday life. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in another country."