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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 allegation about reported election fraud, has told that she at first thought it was all a mistake. Or a prank.

But then her online profiles blew up and people started mentioning her on Instagram.

"Initially it was a few scattered messages. I thought they were confusing me for someone else," she said. "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 contacting 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 not once been to India, says she looked on Google to understand what was happening.

What Transpired

What had taken place was the consequence 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 press conference, the election authority 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 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 number of claims of "electoral fraud" 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 incorrect locations. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged 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 large image of Nery, while another showed a collection of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her photos.

"What person is this woman? What age is she? She votes 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 numerous 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 Truth Behind the Photo

The 29-year-old confirmed that it was indeed 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 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 determine if it is risky for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or incorrect because I do not know the parties involved," she said.

"I couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even see 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 disturbing my workplace. My boss even spoke to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed 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 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 provide someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he said. "I thought it was a scam. I blocked and flagged it."

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

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

Ferrero says some websites put 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 starting out 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 became viral… 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 session.

"I removed them out of concern, because the photos were being improperly used. I got frightened imagining this happening to other people I photographed. I felt violated. A lot of random people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform was open and I posted like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos restricted.

"When you see people entering your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you panic. The first reaction is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Transformative Events

Not one of Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand 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 positive?

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

Nery who has never left the country says: "This situation is distant from my reality. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."