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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her photograph was splashed over the news in an allegation about reported election fraud, has explained that she at first thought it was all a mistake. Or a prank.

But then her social media blew up and people started mentioning her on Instagram.

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

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 searched on Google to understand what was going on.

What Had Happened

What had taken place was the consequence of a press conference 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 rejected the allegations.

Some time after the media event, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they claimed they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an oath with the names of ineligible voters "so that necessary proceedings 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 number of accusations of "vote theft" against the poll panel since early August.

In his latest 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, multiple registrations and incorrect locations. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported 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 compilation of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her images.

"What person is this woman? What age is she? She casts ballots 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 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 Photo

The 29-year-old verified that it was indeed her in the photograph. "Yes. 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, "thought I was pretty and asked to take photos of me".

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

"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 correct or wrong because I do not know the parties involved," she said.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many journalists were calling me. They located the number of the place where I work.

"I needed to delete 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 in my career."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed 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 make sense of 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 give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he said. "I thought it was a scam. I blocked and flagged it."

But since Gandhi's press conference, "the situation have exploded".

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I deactivated my Instagram to try to comprehend what was happening. Later I googled and realised what was occurring, 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 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 photo session. Ferrero said he shared 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 removed 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 occurring to other people I shot. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform 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 entering your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you panic. The first response is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Events

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 asked 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 specifics," he said.

Nery who has not once left the country states: "This situation is far from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, much less in another country."