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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her photograph was displayed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has told that she initially thought it was all a error. Or a joke.

But then her online profiles blew up and people started tagging her on Instagram.

"At first it was a few scattered messages. I thought they were confusing me for someone else," she explained. "Then they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was artificial intelligence or some joke. But then lots of people started messaging at the same time and I understood it was actually happening."

Nery, who resides in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has never been to India, says she looked on Google to understand what was happening.

The Events That Had Happened

What had taken place was the fallout of a media briefing 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 press conference, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an oath with the names of ineligible voters "so that necessary actions could be initiated". They did not respond to the particular allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of claims of "electoral fraud" 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 problematic registrations - including repeated entries, bulk voters and invalid addresses. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged manipulation 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 large 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 woman? What age is she? She casts ballots 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 appeared 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 certainly her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Considerably younger, but it is me. I am the individual 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 focus in the past two days from "individuals from India, many of them journalists", has left her scared.

"I felt fear. I cannot determine if it is risky for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right 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 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 consider it a meme, but it is affecting me in my career."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the sudden 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 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 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 scam. I ignored and flagged it."

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

"Individuals were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I disabled my Instagram to try to comprehend what was going on. Later I googled 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 permission. "People were making memes, like turning 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 consent.

"The photo became viral… reached around 57 million views," he said.

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 session.

"I removed them out of concern, because the photos were being improperly used. 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 posted like millions of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

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

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 other end of the world could dramatically change their lives.

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

"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 situation is distant from my everyday life. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in another country."