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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her image was splashed over the news in an claim about reported election fraud, has told that she initially 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 random messages. I thought they were mistaking me for someone else," she explained. "Later they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some joke. But then lots of people started contacting at the same time and I realised it was actually happening."

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 understand what was happening.

The Events That Transpired

What had occurred was the fallout of a press conference 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 denied the claims.

Some time after the media event, the election authority of Haryana shared a letter they claimed 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 respond to the specific allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of claims of "vote theft" against the election authority 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, bulk voters and invalid addresses. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported manipulation 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 images.

"Who is this woman? 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 repeatedly across multiple voter entries under various 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. "Absolutely. 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 take photos of me".

Now years later, all the focus in the past two days from "people from India, many of them journalists", has left her scared.

"I became scared. I cannot determine if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong 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 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 took Nery's photo, is also swamped by the unexpected attention. Until recently, 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 reached out to him from India a week back, asking him who the woman in the photo was, he stated.

"I didn't respond. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't been in contact with this friend in years," he said. "I believed it was a fraud. I ignored and reported it."

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

"Individuals were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I disabled my Instagram to try to comprehend what was happening. Later I searched online 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 permission. "People 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 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 consent.

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

"I deleted them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got scared imagining this occurring to other people I shot. I felt invaded. A lot of unknown people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The platform was accessible and I uploaded like millions of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you panic. The first response is to close all accounts and understand later. Some people thought it was amusing, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Life Changing Events

Not one of Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that occurred at the far side of the world could dramatically change their lives.

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

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

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