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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her image was displayed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has told that she at first thought it was all a error. Or a joke.

But then her online profiles blew up 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 prank. But then many people started contacting 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 looked on Google to understand what was going on.

The Events That Had Happened

What had occurred was the fallout of a media briefing by Indian political figure 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 rejected 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 declaration with the names of ineligible voters "so that necessary actions could be started". They did not reply to the specific allegations he made and did not provide statements on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of accusations of "electoral fraud" against the election authority 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 duplicates, bulk voters and invalid addresses. He attributed 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 big image of Nery, while another showed a collection of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her images.

"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 multiple 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 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 individual in the images."

She explained 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, "thought I was pretty 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 scared.

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

"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 talked to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is impacting me in my career."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who captured Nery's photo, is also swamped by the sudden 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 make sense of 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 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 said. "I thought it was a fraud. I blocked and flagged it."

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

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

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals were making memes, like transforming it into a game show joke. It's absurd."

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 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 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 invaded. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The platform was open and I posted like millions 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 response is to close all accounts and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Transformative Events

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

When asked if all this helped reveal 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 says: "This is far from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."