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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her photograph was splashed over the news in an claim about reported election fraud, has told that she at first thought it was all a error. Or a prank.

But then her social media exploded with activity and people started mentioning her on Instagram.

"Initially it was a few scattered messages. I thought they were confusing me for someone else," she said. "Then they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was artificial intelligence or some prank. But then lots of people started contacting at the same time and I understood it was real."

Nery, who resides 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.

What Had Happened

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

Some time 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 ineligible voters "so that necessary actions could be initiated". 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 claims of "vote theft" against the poll panel 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 duplicates, bulk voters and incorrect locations. He attributed 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 standing 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 photos.

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

He explained that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly across numerous voter entries under different names. He described Nery as a model who had appeared on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

The Reality Behind the Image

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, "thought I was pretty and asked to take photos of me".

Now years later, all the attention in the past two days from "individuals from India, many of them reporters", 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 incorrect because I do not know the groups involved," she expressed.

"I couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many journalists were calling 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 professionally."

The Camera Artist's Viewpoint

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 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 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 provide 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 flagged it."

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

"People 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 happening, but at first I had no idea."

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "People were creating jokes, like transforming 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 consent.

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

He has now deleted the link from his Unsplash account but he provided 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 frightened imagining this happening to other people I photographed. I felt violated. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The platform was accessible and I posted like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

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

Life Changing Circumstances

Neither 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 turn their lives upside down.

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

"Certainly, I think that would be good. 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, much less in another country."