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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 reported election fraud, has explained that she at first thought it was all a error. Or a prank.

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

"Initially 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 artificial intelligence or some joke. 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 understand what was going on.

What Transpired

What had occurred was the consequence of a press conference 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 rejected the claims.

Some time after the media event, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they claimed they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an declaration with the names of ineligible voters "so 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 series of claims of "electoral fraud" against the poll panel since early August.

In his latest 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 duplicates, bulk voters and incorrect locations. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged tampering of the voters' list.

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

"Who is this lady? How old 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 repeatedly across multiple 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 Truth 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 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 focus in the past two days from "people from India, many of them reporters", has left her scared.

"I felt fear. I cannot tell if it is risky 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 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 had to remove 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 took 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 television series - 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 contacted to him from India a week back, asking him who the woman in the photo was, he explained.

"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 reported it."

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

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

Ferrero says some websites put 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 photo session. Ferrero said he posted 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 provided screenshots taken earlier that showed other photos of Nery from the same shoot.

"I deleted them out of concern, because the photos were being improperly used. I got scared imagining this happening to other people I photographed. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform 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 figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Life Changing Circumstances

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

When asked 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 responded.

Nery who has never left the country says: "This is distant from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, much less in another country."