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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her image was displayed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has explained that she at first thought it was all a error. 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 confusing 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 many people started contacting 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 not once been to India, says she looked on Google to understand what was going on.

What Had Happened

What had taken place was the fallout of a media briefing by Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday where he accused 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 allegations.

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 number of accusations of "vote theft" against the election authority since early August.

In his latest 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 irregular entries - including repeated entries, multiple registrations and invalid addresses. 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 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 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 Reality Behind the Image

The 29-year-old verified 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 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 journalists", has left her frightened.

"I felt fear. I cannot determine 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 couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many reporters 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 affecting me in my career."

The Photographer's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who captured 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 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 seen this friend in years," he said. "I thought it was a scam. I blocked and reported it."

But since Gandhi's press conference, "the situation have escalated dramatically".

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

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "People were making memes, like turning it into a game show joke. It's ridiculous."

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 shared the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"The photo blew up… achieved around 57 million views," he said.

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 shoot.

"I deleted them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got scared imagining this occurring to other people I photographed. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform was accessible and I uploaded like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you panic. 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 invaded."

Life Changing Events

Not one of 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 turn their lives upside down.

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

"Yes, I think that would be positive. But I don't truly know the specifics," he responded.

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