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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her image was displayed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has explained that she initially thought it was all a error. Or a prank.

But then her online profiles exploded with activity and people started tagging her on Instagram.

"Initially it was a few random 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 artificial intelligence or some joke. But then lots of people started messaging at the same time and I understood it was real."

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 understand what was happening.

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 denied 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 declaration with the names of ineligible voters "in order 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 number 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 repeated entries, bulk voters and invalid addresses. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported 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 collection of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her photos.

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

He clarified that a solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used multiple times across numerous voter entries under various 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 indeed her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Much 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 photograph of me".

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

"I became scared. I cannot determine if it is dangerous for me or if talking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is right or incorrect because I do not know the groups involved," she said.

"I couldn't 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 disturbing my workplace. My boss even talked to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

The Camera Artist's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who captured 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 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 stated.

"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 thought it was a fraud. I blocked and flagged it."

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

"Individuals were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I deactivated my Instagram to try to comprehend what was going on. Later I googled and understood what was happening, but at first I had no clue."

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. "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 invited Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photo session. Ferrero said he posted the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

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

He has now deleted the link from his Unsplash account but he shared 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 occurring to other people I shot. I felt violated. 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 posted like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

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

Life Changing Events

Neither Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that occurred at the far side of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When questioned if all this contributed to reveal electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

"Yes, I think that would be good. But I don't really 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 follow elections in Brazil, let alone in another country."