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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 claim about reported election fraud, has explained that she at first thought it was all a error. Or a prank.

But then her online profiles blew up 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 prank. But then many people started contacting 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 understand what was happening.

The Events That Had Happened

What had occurred was the fallout of a media briefing 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 denied the allegations.

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

In his latest 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 duplicates, multiple registrations and invalid addresses. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported manipulation of the voters' list.

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

"Who is this woman? How old is she? She votes 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi stated.

He explained that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly across multiple voter entries under different 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 verified that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Absolutely. It is me. Much 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, "thought I was pretty and asked to photograph of me".

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

"I felt fear. 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 expressed.

"I couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many journalists were contacting me. They located 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 professionally."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the unexpected 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 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 provide someone's name like that. And I hadn't been in contact with this friend in years," he explained. "I thought it was a fraud. I ignored and reported it."

But since Gandhi's media appearance, "the situation have exploded".

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I deactivated my Instagram to try to understand what was going on. Later I googled and understood what was occurring, but at first I had no idea."

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

"The photo blew up… achieved around 57 million impressions," he stated.

He has now removed 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 concern, because the photos were being misused. I got scared imagining this happening 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 uploaded like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos restricted.

"When you see people entering your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you panic. The first response is to shut everything down and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Transformative Circumstances

Neither Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that occurred at the other end of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When questioned if all this helped reveal electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

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

Nery who has never left the country states: "This is distant from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in another country."