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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her image was splashed over the news in an claim about reported election fraud, has told that she initially thought it was all a error. Or a prank.

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

"At first it was a few random messages. I thought they were confusing me for someone else," she explained. "Later 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 messaging at the same time and I understood 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 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 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 Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an oath with the names of unqualified voters "so that necessary proceedings could be initiated". They did not respond 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 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 irregular entries - including repeated entries, bulk voters and incorrect locations. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported tampering of the voters' list.

To prove 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 photos.

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

He clarified that a solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly 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 Image

The 29-year-old confirmed that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Much 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 attention in the past two days from "people from India, many of them reporters", has left her frightened.

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

"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 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 talked to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is impacting me in my career."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

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 make sense of the events of the last few days in a country thousands of miles away.

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

"I didn't respond. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't been in contact with this friend in years," he said. "I believed it was a scam. I blocked and flagged it."

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

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I deactivated my Instagram to try to comprehend what was happening. 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 permission. "People were making memes, like turning it into a game show joke. It's ridiculous."

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 posted 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 said.

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

"I deleted them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got scared imagining this occurring to other people I shot. I felt invaded. A lot of random people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The website was open and I posted like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

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

Transformative Events

Not one of Ferrero or 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 questioned if all this helped reveal electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

"Yes, I think that would be good. But I don't truly know the details," he responded.

Nery who has not once left the country states: "This is distant from my everyday life. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, much less in another country."