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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her image was splashed over the news in an claim about alleged election fraud, has explained that she initially thought it was all a mistake. Or a prank.

But then her online profiles 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 actually happening."

Nery, who lives in Belo Horizonte, the main urban center of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has never been to India, says she looked on Google to comprehend what was happening.

What Had Happened

What had occurred 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 denied the allegations.

Hours after the press conference, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they claimed they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an declaration with the names of unqualified voters "so that necessary proceedings could be started". They did not reply to the particular allegations he made and did not provide statements on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of claims of "electoral fraud" 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 problematic registrations - including repeated entries, multiple registrations and incorrect locations. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged manipulation 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 photos.

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

He explained that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly across numerous voter entries under different names. He described Nery as a model who had been listed on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

The Truth Behind the Photo

The 29-year-old confirmed 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 clarified 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, "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 scared.

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

"I couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many journalists 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 disturbing my workplace. My boss even talked to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is affecting me in my career."

The Camera Artist'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 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 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 scam. I ignored and flagged it."

But since Gandhi's press conference, "things have exploded".

"Individuals were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I disabled my Instagram to try to understand what was going on. 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. "Individuals were making memes, like turning it into a game show joke. It's ridiculous."

In 2017, Ferrero was just beginning his career as a photographer when he invited Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photo session. Ferrero said he shared 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 stated.

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

"I deleted them out of fear, because the photos were being improperly used. I got scared imagining this occurring 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 open 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, private Instagram, you become alarmed. 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 or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that happened at the far side of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When questioned if all this helped uncover electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

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

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