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

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

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

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

The Events That Transpired

What had occurred was the consequence of a media briefing by Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday where he alleged 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.

Some time after the press conference, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an declaration with the names of unqualified voters "in order that necessary proceedings 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 accusations of "electoral fraud" against the election authority since early August.

In his most recent 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, bulk voters and incorrect locations. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported manipulation of the voters' list.

To demonstrate his claims, he showed a series 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 different names and addresses but all with her images.

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

He explained that a single 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 person in the images."

She explained that she was a hairdresser 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 photograph 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 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 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 see messages from my clients. Many reporters 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 Photographer's Perspective

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

He's still trying to understand the events of the last few days in a country thousands of miles 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 respond. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he said. "I thought it was a fraud. I blocked and flagged it."

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

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I disabled my Instagram to try to understand what was happening. Later I searched online and realised what was occurring, but at first I had no idea."

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals were making memes, like transforming 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 photo session. 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… 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 fear, because the photos were being improperly used. I got frightened imagining this occurring to other people I shot. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' 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 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

Not one of Ferrero or 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 beneficial?

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

Nery who has never left the country says: "This is distant from my reality. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."