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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her image was displayed over the news in an claim about alleged 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 tagging her on Instagram.

"Initially it was a few scattered messages. I thought they were mistaking 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 many people started contacting 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 going on.

The Events That Transpired

What had occurred 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 denied the claims.

Some time after the press conference, 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 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 repeated entries, bulk voters and incorrect locations. 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 standing 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.

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

He clarified that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used multiple times across multiple 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 confirmed that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the individual 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 photograph of me".

Now years later, all the attention in the past two days from "people from India, many of them journalists", has left her scared.

"I became scared. I cannot tell if it is risky for me or if talking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong because I do not know the parties 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 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 treat it like a meme, but it is affecting me in my career."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who took 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 understand 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 explained.

"I didn't respond. 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 scam. I ignored and flagged it."

But since Gandhi's media appearance, "the situation have exploded".

"People were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I deactivated my Instagram to try to comprehend what was going on. Later I searched online and realised what was happening, 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 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 photo session. Ferrero said he shared the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"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 shoot.

"I deleted 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 millions of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos restricted.

"When you see people entering your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you become alarmed. The first reaction is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Life Changing Circumstances

Neither Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that occurred 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 positive?

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

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