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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her image was splashed 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 mentioning her on Instagram.

"At first 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 artificial intelligence or some joke. But then many people started messaging 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 never been to India, says she searched on Google to comprehend what was happening.

What Had Happened

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 rejected the claims.

Hours after the media event, the election authority of Haryana shared a letter they claimed they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an declaration with the names of unqualified voters "in order that necessary proceedings could be initiated". They did not reply to the specific allegations he made and did not provide statements on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of claims of "vote theft" 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 problematic registrations - including duplicates, bulk voters and incorrect locations. 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 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.

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

He clarified that a single 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 Truth Behind the Image

The 29-year-old confirmed that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Absolutely. It is me. Considerably 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, "thought I was pretty and asked to photograph of me".

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

"I felt fear. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is correct or incorrect 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 calling me. They found 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 talked to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is impacting me in my career."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

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 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 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 said. "I believed it was a fraud. I ignored and reported it."

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

"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 idea."

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "People were making memes, like transforming it into a game show joke. It's absurd."

In 2017, Ferrero was just beginning his career 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 permission.

"The photo became viral… achieved around 57 million views," he stated.

He has now removed 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 frightened imagining this occurring to other people I photographed. I felt invaded. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform 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, personal Instagram, you become alarmed. The first reaction is to shut everything down and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Circumstances

Not one of Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that happened at the far side of the world could turn their lives upside down.

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

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

Nery who has not once left the country says: "This situation is distant from my everyday life. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."