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A Brazilian hairdresser 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 at first thought it was all a mistake. Or a prank.

But then her online profiles exploded with activity and people started mentioning her on Instagram.

"At first it was a few scattered messages. I thought they were mistaking me for someone else," she explained. "Then they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some joke. But then many people started messaging at the same time and I understood it was actually happening."

Nery, who lives 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 going on.

The Events That Transpired

What had taken place was the fallout of a press conference by Indian political figure Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday where he alleged 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 claims.

Hours after the media event, 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 started". They did not respond to the particular allegations he made and did not provide statements on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of claims of "electoral fraud" against the election authority since early August.

In his most recent 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 series 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 various names and addresses but all with her images.

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

He explained that a solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly across multiple voter entries under various 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 Image

The 29-year-old confirmed that it was certainly 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 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 focus in the past two days from "people from India, many of them reporters", has left her frightened.

"I became scared. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong 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 calling 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 Camera Artist's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the unexpected attention. Until not long ago, 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 been in contact with this friend in years," he said. "I believed it was a scam. I ignored and reported it."

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

"People were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I disabled my Instagram to try to understand what was happening. Later I searched online 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 turning 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 photoshoot. Ferrero said he posted the photos on his Facebook and also uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

"The photo became viral… reached around 57 million impressions," he said.

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 concern, 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 wrong?' 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 panic. The first response is to close all accounts and understand later. Some people thought it was amusing, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Circumstances

Neither Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that occurred at the other end of the world could turn their lives upside down.

When questioned if all this helped reveal electoral fraud, would that be positive?

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

Nery who has never left the country says: "This situation is distant from my reality. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, much less in another country."