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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her photograph was displayed over the news in an claim about alleged 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 mentioning her on Instagram.

"At first it was a few random messages. I thought they were mistaking me for someone else," she said. "Then they sent me the video where my face was shown 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 main urban center of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has not once been to India, says she looked on Google to comprehend what was happening.

What Transpired

What had taken place was the consequence of a media briefing by Indian political figure 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 claims.

Hours after the media event, the election authority 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 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 election authority 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 repeated entries, bulk voters and invalid addresses. He blamed 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 positioned in front of a large image of Nery, while another showed a collection of 22 voters with various names and addresses but all with her images.

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

He explained that a solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly 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 Truth Behind the Image

The 29-year-old confirmed 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 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, "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 reporters", has left her scared.

"I became scared. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if talking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is correct 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 check messages from my clients. Many journalists were contacting me. They located 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 treat it like a meme, but it is impacting me in my career."

The Camera Artist's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also swamped by the sudden attention. Until recently, 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 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 explained. "I believed it was a fraud. I ignored and flagged it."

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

"Individuals were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I disabled my Instagram to try to comprehend what was happening. Later I googled 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 permission. "Individuals were creating jokes, like transforming it into a game show joke. It's absurd."

In 2017, Ferrero was just starting out 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 became viral… reached around 57 million impressions," he stated.

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 misused. 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 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 accessing your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you panic. The first response is to close all accounts and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Life Changing Circumstances

Not one of Ferrero nor 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 contributed to reveal electoral fraud, would that be positive?

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

Nery who has never left the country states: "This is far from my everyday life. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, much less in another country."