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

But then her social media exploded with activity 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. "Then they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some joke. But then lots of people started messaging at the same time and I realised it was actually happening."

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 going on.

The Events That Transpired

What had taken place was the fallout of a press conference by Indian opposition leader 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 claims.

Hours 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 endorse an declaration with the names of unqualified voters "in order that necessary actions could be started". They did not reply to the specific 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 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, bulk voters and invalid addresses. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported manipulation 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 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 woman? How old is she? She casts ballots 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi said.

He clarified that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used multiple times across numerous 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 individual in the images."

She clarified 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 focus in the past two days from "people from India, many of them reporters", has left her frightened.

"I became scared. I cannot determine if it is risky 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 found 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 spoke 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 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 explained.

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

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

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

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. "Individuals were creating jokes, 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 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 said.

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

"I removed them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got frightened imagining this happening to other people I shot. I felt invaded. A lot of unknown people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform was accessible and I uploaded like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you become alarmed. The first reaction is to close all accounts and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Transformative 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 helped reveal 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 not once left the country states: "This is distant from my everyday life. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in another country."