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

But then her online profiles 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 explained. "Later they sent me the video where my face was shown on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some prank. But then many people started messaging at the same time and I realised it was real."

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 searched on Google to comprehend what was going on.

The Events That Had Happened

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 engaging in voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has rejected the allegations.

Hours after the press conference, 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 "so that necessary actions could be initiated". They did not reply to the specific allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of accusations of "vote theft" against the poll panel 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 irregular entries - including repeated entries, bulk voters and incorrect locations. 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 number of slides on a big screen. One of them showed Gandhi standing in front of a big 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 votes 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi stated.

He explained that a solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used multiple times across numerous voter entries under different names. He described Nery as a model who had been listed on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

The Reality Behind the Photo

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

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

"I became scared. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if talking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is correct 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 contacting 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 treat it like a meme, but it is affecting me in my career."

The Camera Artist's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed 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 understand the events of the last few days in a country thousands of miles 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 respond. I'm not going to provide someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he said. "I thought it was a fraud. I blocked and reported it."

But since Gandhi's media appearance, "things have escalated dramatically".

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. 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 idea."

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals 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 posted the photos on his Facebook and also uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

"The photo became viral… achieved around 57 million impressions," 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 session.

"I deleted them out of fear, because the photos were being improperly used. I got frightened imagining this happening 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 uploaded like millions of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos restricted.

"When you see people entering your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you panic. The first response is to close all accounts and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Events

Not one of Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that happened at the other end of the world could turn their lives upside down.

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

"Yes, 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."