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

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

"At first it was a few scattered messages. I thought they were confusing me for someone else," she said. "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 realised 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 happening.

The Events That Transpired

What had taken place was the consequence 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 claims.

Hours after the press conference, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an oath with the names of unqualified voters "in order that necessary actions could be initiated". They did not respond to the specific allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of accusations 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 problematic registrations - including duplicates, 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 number 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.

"Who is this lady? How old is she? She votes 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi said.

He explained 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 Photo

The 29-year-old verified that it was indeed her in the photograph. "Absolutely. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the individual 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, "found me attractive and asked to photograph of me".

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

"I became scared. I cannot tell if it is risky for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong because I do not know the parties 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 contacting me. They found 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 affecting me professionally."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the sudden 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 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 said. "I thought it was a scam. I blocked and flagged it."

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

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

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals were creating jokes, like turning 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 photoshoot. Ferrero said he posted the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"The photo became viral… 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 shoot.

"I removed them out of fear, because the photos were being improperly used. I got frightened imagining this happening to other people I photographed. I felt invaded. A lot of unknown people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The website was accessible and I uploaded 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 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 other end of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When questioned if all this helped reveal electoral fraud, would that be positive?

"Certainly, I think that would be positive. But I don't truly know the specifics," he responded.

Nery who has not once left the country states: "This situation is distant from my everyday life. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, much less in a different country."