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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her photograph was displayed over the news in an allegation about reported election fraud, has explained that she at first thought it was all a error. Or a joke.

But then her online profiles exploded with activity 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 was shown on a big screen. I thought it was artificial intelligence or some joke. But then lots of people started contacting 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 looked on Google to understand what was going on.

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 denied the allegations.

Some time after the media event, 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 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 accusations of "vote theft" against the poll panel since early August.

In his most recent claims, he said his team had examined 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 invalid addresses. 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 standing 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 woman? What age is she? She votes 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi stated.

He explained that a solitary 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 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. Considerably younger, but it is me. I am the person 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 focus in the past two days from "individuals from India, many of them journalists", has left her frightened.

"I became scared. I cannot determine if it is risky for me or if talking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is right or incorrect because I do not know the groups involved," she expressed.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many journalists 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 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 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 been in contact with this friend in years," he explained. "I thought it was a fraud. I blocked and flagged it."

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

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

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. "Individuals were creating jokes, like transforming 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 uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"The photo became viral… achieved 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 concern, 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 platform was open and I uploaded like millions of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you panic. The first response is to close all accounts and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Transformative Events

Not one of Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that occurred at the other end of the world could turn their lives upside down.

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

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

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