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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her image was splashed over the news in an claim about alleged election fraud, has explained that she initially thought it was all a mistake. Or a prank.

But then her online profiles 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 said. "Later they sent me the video where my face was shown on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some prank. But then lots of 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 never been to India, says she looked on Google to understand what was happening.

What 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 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 ineligible voters "in order that necessary proceedings could be initiated". They did not reply to the specific allegations he made and did not provide statements on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of accusations of "vote theft" against the poll panel 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 problematic registrations - including duplicates, multiple registrations and invalid addresses. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged manipulation 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 collection of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her images.

"What person is this lady? What age is she? She votes 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi said.

He explained that a solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used multiple times across numerous voter entries under different names. He described 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. "Yes. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the individual 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, "thought I was pretty 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 determine if it is dangerous for me or if talking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is correct or wrong because I do not know the parties 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 professionally."

The Photographer's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also swamped 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 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 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 scam. I blocked and flagged it."

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

"Individuals were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I deactivated my Instagram to try to understand what was going on. Later I searched online and understood what was happening, but at first I had no idea."

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

In 2017, Ferrero was just beginning his career as a photographer when he asked 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 consent.

"The photo blew up… achieved around 57 million views," 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 shoot.

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

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

Life Changing Circumstances

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

When questioned if all this helped uncover electoral fraud, would that be positive?

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

Nery who has not once left the country says: "This situation is far from my reality. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."