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

But then her social media exploded with activity 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. "Then they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some prank. But then lots of people started contacting at the same time and I understood 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 understand what was going on.

What Had Happened

What had occurred was the fallout 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.

Some time after the press conference, the Chief Electoral Officer 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 "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 number 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 invalid addresses. He attributed 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 different names and addresses but all with her images.

"Who is this lady? 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 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 Photo

The 29-year-old confirmed that it was certainly 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 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 attention in the past two days from "people from India, many of them journalists", has left her scared.

"I became scared. 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 did not go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many journalists were calling me. They located the number of the place where I work.

"I had to remove 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 in my career."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also swamped 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 contacted 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 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 blocked and flagged it."

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

"People were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I disabled my Instagram to try to understand what was happening. 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. "Individuals were creating jokes, like turning it into a game show joke. It's ridiculous."

In 2017, Ferrero was just beginning his career as a photographer when he asked Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photo session. Ferrero said he shared the photos on his Facebook and also uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

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

He has now deleted 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 fear, because the photos were being misused. I got scared imagining this happening to other people I photographed. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The platform was open 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, 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 Circumstances

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 reveal electoral fraud, would that be positive?

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

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