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

But then her social media exploded with activity and people started mentioning her on Instagram.

"At first it was a few random messages. I thought they were confusing 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 AI or some prank. But then lots of 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 searched on Google to comprehend what was going on.

The Events That Had Happened

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

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

Gandhi has made a series of claims of "vote theft" against the election authority 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 invalid addresses. 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 standing 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.

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

He clarified 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 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 confirmed that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Considerably younger, but it is me. I am the individual 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 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 frightened.

"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 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 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 talked to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Photographer's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also swamped 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 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 explained.

"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 said. "I believed it was a scam. I blocked and reported it."

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

"Individuals were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I deactivated my Instagram to try to understand what was happening. Later I googled and understood 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 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 permission.

"The photo blew up… achieved 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 fear, because the photos were being misused. I got frightened imagining this occurring to other people I shot. I felt invaded. A lot of random people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The platform was accessible and I uploaded like millions of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos restricted.

"When you see people entering your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you become alarmed. The first reaction is to close all accounts and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Life Changing Events

Neither Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that happened at the far side of the world could turn their lives upside down.

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

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

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