🔗 Share this article

A Brazilian hairdresser 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 told that she at first thought it was all a mistake. Or a joke.

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 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 artificial intelligence or some joke. But then lots of people started messaging at the same time and I understood it was real."

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 looked on Google to understand what was happening.

What Transpired

What had taken place was the consequence of a press conference by Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday where he alleged 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 said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an declaration 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 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 series 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? 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 numerous voter entries under various names. He described Nery as a model who had appeared on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

The Reality Behind the Photo

The 29-year-old verified that it was indeed her in the photograph. "Yes. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the individual 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 take photos of me".

Now years later, all the focus in the past two days from "people from India, many of them journalists", has left her scared.

"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 correct 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 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 disturbing my workplace. My boss even spoke to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Photographer's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also swamped 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 a great distance away.

Some people had reached out to him from India a week back, asking him who the woman in the photo was, he stated.

"I didn't respond. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't been in contact with this friend in years," he said. "I believed it was a fraud. I blocked and flagged it."

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

"People were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I deactivated my Instagram to try to comprehend what was going on. Later I googled and realised what was happening, but at first I had no clue."

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "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 posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"The photo became viral… reached around 57 million views," 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 shoot.

"I removed them out of concern, because the photos were being misused. I got frightened imagining this happening 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 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 reaction is to close all accounts and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Life Changing Circumstances

Neither Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to comprehend how something that happened at the other end of the world could dramatically change their lives.

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 really know the specifics," he said.

Nery who has not once left the country says: "This is far from my everyday life. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in another country."