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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention 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 prank.

But then her online profiles exploded with activity 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 explained. "Then they sent me the video where my face was shown on a big screen. I thought it was artificial intelligence or some joke. But then many people started messaging at the same time and I realised 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 going on.

The Events That 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 denied the claims.

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 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 series of claims of "vote theft" against the election authority since early August.

In his most recent claims, he said his team had looked through 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 alleged tampering of the voters' list.

To prove his claims, he showed a number of slides on a big screen. One of them showed Gandhi positioned in front of a big image of Nery, while another showed a compilation of 22 voters with various names and addresses but all with her photos.

"What person is this lady? What age is she? She votes 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 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 Truth Behind the Photo

The 29-year-old verified that it was indeed her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Considerably younger, but it is me. I am the person 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 take photos 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 felt fear. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is correct or wrong because I do not know the parties involved," she expressed.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many journalists were contacting 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 consider it a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Camera Artist's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the sudden attention. Until recently, he says India meant only Caminho das Índias - the 2009 Brazilian television series - to him.

He's still trying to understand 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 reply. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he explained. "I thought it was a scam. I blocked and reported it."

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

"Individuals were calling 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 happening, but at first I had no clue."

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 absurd."

In 2017, Ferrero was just beginning his career as a photographer when he asked Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photoshoot. 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 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 shoot.

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

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

Life Changing Circumstances

Neither Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that happened at the other end of the world could turn their lives upside down.

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

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

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