🔗 Share this article

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

But then her social media exploded with activity 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. "Later 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 resides 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 understand what was going on.

What Transpired

What had taken place was the consequence 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 rejected the allegations.

Some time after the media event, the election authority of Haryana shared a letter they claimed they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an oath with the names of unqualified voters "so that necessary proceedings could be started". They did not respond to the particular allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of claims of "vote theft" 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 duplicates, 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 positioned in front of a large image of Nery, while another showed a collection of 22 voters with various names and addresses but all with her photos.

"Who is this woman? How old is she? She votes 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi said.

He clarified that a solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly 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 certainly her in the photograph. "Absolutely. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the individual 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 "people from India, many of them reporters", has left her frightened.

"I became scared. I cannot determine if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is correct or wrong because I do not know the parties involved," she expressed.

"I couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many journalists were calling me. They located 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 consider it a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

The Photographer's Perspective

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 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 explained.

"I didn't reply. I'm not going to give 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, "the situation have exploded".

"Individuals were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I deactivated my Instagram to try to comprehend what was happening. Later I googled and understood what was happening, but at first I had no idea."

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals were making memes, 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 permission.

"The photo became viral… achieved around 57 million impressions," 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 session.

"I removed them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got scared imagining this occurring to other people I shot. I felt violated. A lot of random people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The website was open and I posted like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

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

Life Changing Circumstances

Not one of Ferrero nor 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 asked if all this helped reveal electoral fraud, would that be positive?

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

Nery who has never left the country states: "This situation is distant from my everyday life. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, much less in a different country."