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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her image was splashed over the news in an allegation about reported election fraud, has explained that she initially thought it was all a error. Or a joke.

But then her social media exploded with activity 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 appeared on a big screen. I thought it was artificial intelligence or some prank. But then many people started messaging at the same time and I understood 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 searched on Google to understand what was going on.

What Transpired

What had occurred 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 allegations.

Some time 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 started". They did not respond to the particular allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of accusations of "vote theft" against the election authority 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 problematic registrations - including duplicates, 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 series of slides on a big screen. One of them showed Gandhi positioned in front of a big image of Nery, while another showed a compilation of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her images.

"Who is this lady? How old 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 numerous 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 Truth Behind the Image

The 29-year-old confirmed 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 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, "found me attractive and asked to take photos of me".

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

"I became scared. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if talking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is correct 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 check messages from my clients. Many reporters 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 consider it a meme, but it is impacting me in my career."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed 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 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 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 said. "I thought it was a fraud. I ignored and reported it."

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

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I deactivated my Instagram to try to understand 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 authorization. "Individuals were creating jokes, 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… reached around 57 million impressions," he said.

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 removed them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got scared imagining this happening to other people I shot. I felt invaded. 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 posted like millions 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 become alarmed. The first reaction is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was amusing, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Transformative Events

Not one of Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that happened at the far side of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When asked if all this contributed to reveal 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 not once left the country says: "This is distant from my everyday life. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."