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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 error. Or a joke.

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

"Initially it was a few random messages. I thought they were confusing 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 AI or some prank. But then many people started messaging at the same time and I realised it was actually happening."

Nery, who lives in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has not once been to India, says she looked 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 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 allegations.

Some time after the media event, 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 proceedings could be started". They did not respond to the particular allegations he made and did not provide statements 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 duplicates, multiple registrations and incorrect locations. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported 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 big image of Nery, while another showed a collection of 22 voters with different 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 solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly across multiple voter entries under various 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 Reality Behind the Image

The 29-year-old confirmed that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the person in the images."

She explained that she was a stylist 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 attention in the past two days from "people from India, many of them reporters", has left her frightened.

"I became scared. I cannot determine if it is dangerous 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 expressed.

"I couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many journalists were calling me. They found the number of the place where I work.

"I had to remove the salon name from my profile because they were bothering my workplace. My boss even spoke to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

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 make sense of 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 give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he explained. "I believed it was a scam. I ignored and reported it."

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

"People were calling 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 clue."

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals were creating jokes, like turning it into a game show joke. It's ridiculous."

In 2017, Ferrero was just starting out 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 views," he said.

He has now removed the link from his Unsplash account but he provided screenshots taken earlier that showed other photos of Nery from the same shoot.

"I removed 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 unknown people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The platform was open and I posted 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, personal Instagram, you become alarmed. 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 violated."

Transformative Circumstances

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

"Certainly, I think that would be positive. But I don't really know the specifics," he said.

Nery who has not once left the country states: "This situation is distant from my everyday life. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in another country."