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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her photograph was displayed over the news in an claim about reported election fraud, has explained that she at first thought it was all a error. Or a joke.

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

"At first it was a few random messages. I thought they were mistaking 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 many people started messaging at the same time and I understood it was real."

Nery, who lives in Belo Horizonte, the main urban center of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has not once been to India, says she searched on Google to comprehend what was happening.

What Transpired

What had occurred was the fallout of a press conference 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 media event, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an oath with the names of unqualified voters "in order that necessary proceedings could be initiated". They did not reply to the particular allegations he made and did not provide statements 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 examined the Election Commission's voter list data and found that of the approximately 20 million voters, 2.5 million were problematic registrations - including repeated entries, bulk voters and incorrect locations. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged manipulation of the voters' list.

To demonstrate his claims, he showed a number 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 various names and addresses but all with her photos.

"Who is this woman? What age is she? She casts ballots 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi stated.

He explained that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used multiple times across numerous voter entries under various 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 Image

The 29-year-old verified 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 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 attention in the past two days from "individuals from India, many of them reporters", has left her scared.

"I felt fear. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if talking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is right or incorrect because I do not know the parties involved," she said.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many reporters 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 talked to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the sudden 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 make sense of 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 explained.

"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 believed it was a scam. I blocked and reported it."

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

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

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals were making memes, 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 permission.

"The photo blew up… reached around 57 million impressions," 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 misused. I got frightened imagining this occurring to other people I photographed. I felt invaded. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' 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 entering your Twitter, Facebook, personal 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 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 far side of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When asked if all this helped reveal electoral fraud, would that be positive?

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

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."