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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her photograph was displayed over the news in an allegation about reported 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.

"Initially 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 messaging at the same time and I understood 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 comprehend what was happening.

The Events That Had Happened

What had taken place was the fallout 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 election authority of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an declaration 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 series of accusations of "vote theft" 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 blamed 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 standing in front of a big image of Nery, while another showed a collection of 22 voters with various names and addresses but all with her images.

"Who is this lady? 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 multiple voter entries under different names. He referred to Nery as a model who had been listed on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

The Reality Behind the Photo

The 29-year-old verified that it was indeed her in the photograph. "Absolutely. 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, "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 scared.

"I felt fear. 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 incorrect because I do not know the groups involved," she expressed.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many reporters were contacting me. They located the number of the place where I work.

"I needed to delete 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 Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also swamped by the unexpected attention. Until recently, he says India meant only Caminho das Índias - the 2009 Brazilian television series - 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 explained. "I believed it was a scam. I ignored and flagged it."

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

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I disabled my Instagram to try to comprehend what was going on. Later I googled and realised what was happening, but at first I had no idea."

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. "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 photoshoot. Ferrero said he shared the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

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

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 misused. I got scared imagining this happening to other people I shot. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform was open and I uploaded 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 panic. The first response is to close all accounts and figure things out later. Some people thought it was amusing, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Transformative Events

Not one of 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 dramatically change their lives.

When questioned if all this contributed to uncover electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

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

Nery who has not once left the country says: "This is distant from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, much less in another country."