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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her image was displayed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has told that she at first thought it was all a mistake. 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 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 joke. But then many people started contacting at the same time and I understood it was real."

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

What Transpired

What had taken place was the consequence 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 committing voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has rejected the allegations.

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 respond to the specific allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of claims of "electoral fraud" against the election authority since early August.

In his most recent 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 repeated entries, multiple registrations and incorrect locations. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged 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 large image of Nery, while another showed a compilation of 22 voters with various names and addresses but all with her images.

"Who is this woman? What age is she? She casts ballots 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 numerous voter entries under various 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 indeed her in the photograph. "Yes. 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, "found me attractive 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 risky for me or if talking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong because I do not know the parties involved," she said.

"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 found the number of the place where I work.

"I needed to delete the salon name from my profile because they were bothering my workplace. My boss even talked to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also swamped by the unexpected 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 understand the events of the last few days in a country thousands of miles away.

Some people had contacted 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 provide someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he explained. "I thought it was a scam. I ignored and flagged it."

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

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I deactivated my Instagram to try to comprehend what was happening. 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. "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 posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"The photo became viral… achieved around 57 million impressions," 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 violated. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The website was open and I uploaded like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

"When you see people accessing 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 funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Transformative Circumstances

Not one of 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 dramatically change their lives.

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

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

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