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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines 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 mistake. 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 explained. "Then they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some joke. But then lots of people started messaging at the same time and I realised it was actually happening."

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 searched on Google to comprehend what was happening.

The Events That Transpired

What had taken place was the fallout 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 committing voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has denied 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 endorse an declaration with the names of unqualified voters "so that necessary actions could be started". They did not reply 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 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 invalid addresses. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged manipulation 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 collection of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her photos.

"What person is this woman? How old is she? She casts ballots 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 repeatedly across numerous voter entries under different names. He referred to 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 indeed her in the photograph. "Absolutely. It is me. Considerably younger, but it is me. I am the person 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, "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 scared.

"I felt fear. I cannot determine if it is risky for me or if talking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong because I do not know the groups involved," she expressed.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many reporters 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 bothering my workplace. My boss even talked to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Camera Artist's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also swamped by the unexpected attention. Until recently, 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 thousands of miles 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 seen this friend in years," he explained. "I believed it was a fraud. I ignored and reported it."

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

"People were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I deactivated my Instagram to try to understand what was happening. Later I searched online and realised what was happening, but at first I had no clue."

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "People were making memes, like turning 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 shared the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"The photo blew up… reached around 57 million views," he stated.

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

"I deleted them out of concern, because the photos were being misused. I got frightened imagining this occurring to other people I shot. 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 restricted.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you panic. 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 Events

Not one of Ferrero nor 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 contributed to reveal 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 never left the country states: "This situation is far from my reality. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."