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A South American stylist 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 told that she initially thought it was all a error. Or a joke.

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

"Initially it was a few scattered messages. I thought they were confusing me for someone else," she said. "Then they sent me the video where my face was shown on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some prank. But then many people started contacting 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 never been to India, says she looked on Google to understand what was happening.

The Events That 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.

Hours after the press conference, the election authority of Haryana shared a letter they claimed they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an declaration with the names of ineligible voters "in order that necessary actions could be started". They did not reply to the specific allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of accusations of "electoral fraud" 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 problematic registrations - including repeated entries, bulk voters and incorrect locations. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported 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 compilation of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her photos.

"What person is this lady? What age 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 repeatedly across multiple voter entries under different 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 certainly 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 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, "thought I was pretty and asked to take photos of me".

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

"I felt fear. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong because I do not know the parties involved," she said.

"I couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many reporters were calling me. They found 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 spoke to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is impacting 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 television series - 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 explained.

"I didn't reply. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he explained. "I thought it was a scam. I blocked and reported it."

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

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I disabled my Instagram to try to comprehend what was happening. Later I searched online and understood what was occurring, but at first I had no clue."

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals 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 asked 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 impressions," he stated.

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 improperly used. I got scared imagining this happening to other people I photographed. I felt violated. A lot of random people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The website was accessible and I uploaded 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 become alarmed. The first reaction is to shut everything down and figure things out later. Some people thought it was amusing, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Transformative Circumstances

Not one of Ferrero nor 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?

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

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