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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 social media blew up and people started tagging 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 appeared on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some prank. But then lots of people started messaging at the same time and I realised it was actually happening."

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 Had Happened

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

Some time after the press conference, the election authority of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an declaration with the names of ineligible voters "in order that necessary proceedings 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 series of claims of "electoral fraud" 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 problematic registrations - including repeated entries, bulk voters and incorrect locations. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported tampering of the voters' list.

To prove his claims, he showed a number of slides on a big screen. One of them showed Gandhi positioned in front of a large image of Nery, while another showed a compilation of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her images.

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

He explained that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used multiple times across numerous voter entries under different names. He referred to Nery as a model who had appeared 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 indeed her in the photograph. "Absolutely. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the person in the images."

She explained 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 focus in the past two days from "individuals from India, many of them reporters", has left her scared.

"I felt fear. I cannot tell if it is risky 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 groups 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 had to remove 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 Camera Artist's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who took 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 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 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 said. "I believed it was a fraud. I blocked and reported it."

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

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

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. "People were creating jokes, like transforming it into a game show joke. It's absurd."

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 shared 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 said.

He has now deleted the link from his Unsplash account but he shared screenshots taken earlier that showed other photos of Nery from the same shoot.

"I removed them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got frightened imagining this occurring to other people I photographed. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people contacting 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 entering your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you panic. 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."

Life Changing Events

Not one of Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that occurred at the far side of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When questioned if all this contributed to uncover electoral fraud, would that be positive?

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

Nery who has not once left the country says: "This situation is far from my reality. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, much less in another country."