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

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 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 not once been to India, says she looked on Google to understand 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 accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party BJP and the Election Commission (EC) of committing voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has rejected the allegations.

Hours 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 "so that necessary actions could be initiated". They did not respond to the specific 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 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 irregular entries - including duplicates, bulk voters 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 collection of 22 voters with various names and addresses but all with her photos.

"What person 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 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 Image

The 29-year-old verified that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Much 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 "people from India, many of them reporters", has left her frightened.

"I felt fear. I cannot tell if it is risky for me or if speaking 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 couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many reporters 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 talked to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

The Photographer's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the unexpected 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 stated.

"I didn't reply. 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 thought it was a fraud. I blocked and flagged it."

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

"People were calling 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 occurring, but at first I had no idea."

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 asked Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photo session. Ferrero said he posted 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 impressions," he stated.

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 concern, because the photos were being improperly used. I got scared imagining this happening to other people I shot. I felt violated. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform was accessible and I posted 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, private Instagram, you become alarmed. The first response is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was amusing, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Events

Neither Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that occurred at the far side of the world could turn their lives upside down.

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

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

Nery who has never left the country says: "This is distant from my everyday life. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, much less in another country."