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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her photograph was splashed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has explained that she initially thought it was all a error. Or a prank.

But then her social media blew up and people started tagging her on Instagram.

"At first it was a few scattered messages. I thought they were confusing me for someone else," she said. "Then they sent me the video where my face appeared 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 actually happening."

Nery, who resides in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has not once been to India, says she searched on Google to comprehend 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 committing voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has denied the claims.

Hours after the media event, 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 "in order that necessary actions could be initiated". They did not respond to the particular allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of accusations 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, multiple registrations 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 standing in front of a large 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 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 multiple 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 Photo

The 29-year-old confirmed that it was indeed her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the person 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, "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 reporters", has left her frightened.

"I felt fear. I cannot determine if it is risky 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 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 disturbing my workplace. My boss even spoke to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is impacting me in my career."

The Photographer's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed 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 make sense of 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 respond. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he explained. "I believed it was a scam. I ignored and flagged it."

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

"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 googled and realised what was happening, but at first I had no idea."

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "People 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 photoshoot. Ferrero said he shared the photos on his Facebook and also uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

"The photo blew up… 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 session.

"I removed them out of concern, because the photos were being improperly used. I got frightened imagining this occurring to other people I shot. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The website was accessible and I uploaded like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos restricted.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you become alarmed. The first reaction is to shut everything down and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, 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 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 uncover electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

"Yes, I think that would be positive. But I don't really know the specifics," he said.

Nery who has never left the country states: "This situation is distant from my everyday life. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."