🔗 Share this article

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

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

"Initially it was a few random 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 AI or some joke. But then many people started contacting 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 never 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 engaging in voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has rejected the claims.

Hours after the press conference, the Chief Electoral Officer 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 accusations of "vote theft" against the poll panel 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 invalid addresses. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported manipulation 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 collection of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her photos.

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

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 appeared on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

The Reality Behind the Image

The 29-year-old confirmed that it was indeed her in the photograph. "Absolutely. 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 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 affect someone there. I do not know who is correct 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 check messages from my clients. Many journalists were contacting me. They found 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 spoke 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 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 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 provide someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he explained. "I thought it was a scam. I blocked and reported it."

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

"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 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 absurd."

In 2017, Ferrero was just starting out 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 permission.

"The photo blew up… achieved around 57 million impressions," he stated.

He has now removed 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 concern, because the photos were being improperly used. I got scared imagining this occurring to other people I shot. I felt invaded. A lot of unknown people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The platform was open and I posted 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, personal Instagram, you panic. 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."

Transformative Circumstances

Not one of Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that occurred at the other end of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When asked if all this contributed to reveal electoral fraud, would that be positive?

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

Nery who has not once left the country says: "This situation is far from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, much less in a different country."