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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her photograph was displayed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has told that she at first thought it was all a mistake. Or a joke.

But then her social media 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 many people started contacting at the same time and I realised it was actually happening."

Nery, who lives 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 going on.

What Had Happened

What had taken place was the fallout 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 engaging in voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has rejected the allegations.

Hours after the media event, 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 proceedings could be started". They did not respond to the specific 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 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 irregular entries - including repeated entries, bulk voters and incorrect locations. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported manipulation of the voters' list.

To prove 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 various names and addresses but all with her images.

"What person is this woman? How old 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 multiple voter entries under different 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 Reality Behind the Image

The 29-year-old verified that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Absolutely. It is me. Considerably 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 take photos of me".

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

"I became scared. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if talking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right 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 reporters were contacting me. They located the number of the place where I work.

"I needed to delete the salon name from my profile because they were bothering my workplace. My boss even spoke to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Photographer's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also swamped by the unexpected attention. Until recently, he says India meant only Caminho das Índias - the 2009 Brazilian primetime show - 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 reply. I'm not going to provide someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he explained. "I believed it was a scam. I blocked and flagged it."

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

"Individuals were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I disabled my Instagram to try to understand what was going on. Later I searched online 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 authorization. "Individuals were creating jokes, 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 uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

"The photo became viral… achieved around 57 million impressions," 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 shoot.

"I deleted them out of concern, because the photos were being improperly used. I got scared imagining this happening 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 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 panic. The first reaction is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was amusing, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Circumstances

Not one of Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that occurred at the other end of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When asked if all this helped reveal electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

"Certainly, I think that would be good. 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 reality. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."