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

But then her online profiles blew up 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. "Later they sent me the video where my face was shown on a big screen. I thought it was artificial intelligence or some prank. But then lots of people started messaging at the same time and I understood 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 understand what was happening.

The Events That Had Happened

What had occurred was the fallout of a media briefing 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 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 endorse 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 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 irregular entries - including duplicates, multiple registrations and incorrect locations. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged tampering 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 photos.

"What person is this lady? How old is she? She casts ballots 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi stated.

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 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 verified that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Considerably younger, but it is me. I am the person 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, "thought I was pretty and asked to photograph of me".

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

"I felt fear. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if talking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is correct or incorrect 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 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 consider it a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the unexpected attention. Until not long ago, 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 explained.

"I didn't reply. I'm not going to provide someone's name like that. And I hadn't been in contact with this friend in years," he explained. "I believed it was a fraud. I ignored and reported it."

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

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

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. "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 asked Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photoshoot. Ferrero said he posted the photos on his Facebook and also uploaded 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 provided screenshots taken earlier that showed other photos of Nery from the same session.

"I deleted 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 unknown people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The platform was accessible and I posted like millions 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 become alarmed. The first response is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was amusing, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Transformative Events

Neither Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that happened at the far side of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When asked if all this contributed to uncover electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

"Yes, I think that would be positive. But I don't truly know the details," he said.

Nery who has never left the country says: "This situation is far from my everyday life. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, much less in another country."