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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her photograph was splashed over the news in an claim about alleged election fraud, has explained that she at first thought it was all a mistake. Or a joke.

But then her social media blew up and people started mentioning her on Instagram.

"Initially 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 artificial intelligence or some prank. But then many people started messaging at the same time and I realised it was actually happening."

Nery, who resides 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 going on.

What Had Happened

What had taken place was the consequence of a media briefing by Indian political figure 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.

Hours after the media event, 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 ineligible voters "in order that necessary actions could be started". They did not respond to the specific allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of accusations of "electoral fraud" against the election authority 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, multiple registrations and incorrect locations. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported tampering of the voters' list.

To demonstrate his claims, he showed a series of slides on a big screen. One of them showed Gandhi positioned in front of a large image of Nery, while another showed a compilation of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her images.

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

He clarified that a solitary 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 been listed 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 person 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, "found me attractive and asked to take photos of me".

Now years later, all the focus in the past two days from "individuals from India, many of them reporters", has left her frightened.

"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 couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even check 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 spoke to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also swamped by the unexpected attention. Until not long ago, he says India meant only Caminho das Índias - the 2009 Brazilian primetime show - 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 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 said. "I thought it was a fraud. I blocked and reported it."

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

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

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "People were creating jokes, like transforming 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 uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

"The photo became viral… reached around 57 million impressions," he said.

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 session.

"I deleted them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got scared imagining this occurring to other people I photographed. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The website was open and I posted like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

"When you see people entering your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you become alarmed. The first reaction is to close all accounts and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Circumstances

Neither Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that happened at the other end of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When asked if all this helped uncover electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

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

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